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Title: A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis

Author: Sigmund Freud

Translator: G. Stanley Hall

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Language: English

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SCHWIND, The Dream of the Prisoner
See page 109 for analysis

A General Introduction
to
Psychoanalysis
BY
PROF. SIGMUND FREUD, LL.D.

AUTHORIZED TRANSLATION
WITH A PREFACE
 BY

G. STANLEY HALL
PRESIDENT, CLARK UNIVERSITY

HORACE LIVERIGHT
PUBLISHER       NEW YORK

Published, 1920, by
HORACE LIVERIGHT, INC.

Printed in the United States of America

COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY EDWARD L. BERNAYS

PREFACE

Few, especially in this country, realize that while Freudian themes have
rarely found a place on the programs of the American Psychological
Association, they have attracted great and growing attention and found frequent
elaboration by students of literature, history, biography, sociology, morals and
aesthetics, anthropology, education, and religion. They have given the world a
new conception of both infancy and adolescence, and shed much new light
upon characterology; given us a new and clearer view of sleep, dreams,
reveries, and revealed hitherto unknown mental mechanisms common to
normal and pathological states and processes, showing that the law of causation
extends to the most incoherent acts and even verbigerations in insanity; gone
far to clear up the terra incognita of hysteria; taught us to recognize morbid
symptoms, often neurotic and psychotic in their germ; revealed the operations
of the primitive mind so overlaid and repressed that we had almost lost sight of
them; fashioned and used the key of symbolism to unlock many mysticisms of
the past; and in addition to all this, affected thousands of cures, established a
new prophylaxis, and suggested new tests for character, disposition, and ability,
in all combining the practical and theoretic to a degree salutary as it is rare.
These twenty-eight lectures to laymen are elementary and almost
conversational. Freud sets forth with a frankness almost startling the difficulties
and limitations of psychoanalysis, and also describes its main methods and
results as only a master and originator of a new school of thought can do. These
discourses are at the same time simple and almost confidential, and they trace
and sum up the results of thirty years of devoted and painstaking research.
While they are not at all controversial, we incidentally see in a clearer light the
distinctions between the master and some of his distinguished pupils. A text
like this is the most opportune and will naturally more or less supersede all
other introductions to the general subject of psychoanalysis. It presents the
author in a new light, as an effective and successful popularizer, and is certain
to be welcomed not only by the large and growing number of students of
psychoanalysis in this country but by the yet larger number of those who wish
to begin its study here and elsewhere.
The impartial student of Sigmund Freud need not agree with all his
conclusions, and indeed, like the present writer, may be unable to make sex so
all-dominating a factor in the psychic life of the past and present as Freud
deems it to be, to recognize the fact that he is the most original and creative
mind in psychology of our generation. Despite the frightful handicap of
the odium sexicum, far more formidable today than the odium theologicum,
involving as it has done for him lack of academic recognition and even more or
less social ostracism, his views have attracted and inspired a brilliant group of
minds not only in psychiatry but in many other fields, who have altogether
given the world of culture more new and pregnant appercus than those which
have come from any other source within the wide domain of humanism.
A former student and disciple of Wundt, who recognizes to the full his
inestimable services to our science, cannot avoid making certain comparisons.
Wundt has had for decades the prestige of a most advantageous academic chair.
He founded the first laboratory for experimental psychology, which attracted
many of the most gifted and mature students from all lands. By his
development of the doctrine of apperception he took psychology forever
beyond the old associationism which had ceased to be fruitful. He also
established the independence of psychology from physiology, and by his
encyclopedic and always thronged lectures, to say nothing of his more or less
esoteric seminary, he materially advanced every branch of mental science and
extended its influence over the whole wide domain of folklore, mores,
language, and primitive religion. His best texts will long constitute a thesaurus
which every psychologist must know.
 Again, like Freud, he inspired students who went beyond him (the
Wurzburgers and introspectionists) whose method and results he could not
follow. His limitations have grown more and more manifest. He has little use
for the unconscious or the abnormal, and for the most part he has lived and
wrought in a preevolutionary age and always and everywhere underestimated
the genetic standpoint. He never transcends the conventional limits in dealing,
as he so rarely does, with sex. Nor does he contribute much likely to be of
permanent value in any part of the wide domain of affectivity. We cannot
forbear to express the hope that Freud will not repeat Wundt's error in making
too abrupt a break with his more advanced pupils like Adler or the Zurich
group. It is rather precisely just the topics that Wundt neglects that Freud makes
his chief corner-stones, viz., the unconscious, the abnormal, sex, and affectivity
generally, with many genetic, especially ontogenetic, but also phylogenetic
factors. The Wundtian influence has been great in the past, while Freud has a
great present and a yet greater future.
In one thing Freud agrees with the introspectionists, viz., in deliberately
neglecting the "physiological factor" and building on purely psychological
foundations, although for Freud psychology is mainly unconscious, while for
the introspectionists it is pure consciousness. Neither he nor his disciples have
yet recognized the aid proffered them by students of the autonomic system or
by the distinctions between the epicritic and protopathic functions and organs
of the cerebrum, although these will doubtless come to have their due place as
we know more of the nature and processes of the unconscious mind.
If psychologists of the normal have hitherto been too little disposed to
recognize the precious contributions to psychology made by the cruel
experiments of Nature in mental diseases, we think that the psychoanalysts,
who work predominantly in this field, have been somewhat too ready to apply
their findings to the operations of the normal mind; but we are optomistic
enough to believe that in the end both these errors will vanish and that in the
great synthesis of the future that now seems to impend our science will be made
vastly richer and deeper on the theoretical side and also far more practical than
it has ever been before.
G. STANLEY HALL.
Clark University,
      April, 1920.

CONTENTS

 
 PART ONE

The Psychology of Errors

PAGE

PREFACE G. Stanley Hall V

LECTURE

I. INTRODUCTION 1

II. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ERRORS 10

III. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ERRORS —(Continued) 23

IV. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ERRORS —(Conclusion) 41

PART TWO

The Dream

V. DIFFICULTIES AND PRELIMINARY APPROACH 63

 VI. HYPOTHESIS AND TECHNIQUE OF INTERPRETATION 78

MANIFEST DREAM CONTENT AND LATENT DREAM

VII. THOUGHT 90

VIII. DREAMS OF CHILDHOOD 101

IX. THE DREAM CENSOR 110

X. SYMBOLISM IN THE DREAM 122

XI. THE DREAM-WORK 141

XII. ANALYSES OF SAMPLE DREAMS 153

XIII. ARCHAIC REMNANTS AND INFANTILISM IN THE DREAM 167

XIV. WISH FULFILLMENT 180

XV. DOUBTFUL POINTS AND CRITICISM 194

PART THREE

General Theory of the Neuroses

XVI. PSYCHOANALYSIS AND PSYCHIATRY 209

 XVII. THE MEANING OF THE SYMPTOMS 221

XVIII. TRAUMATIC FIXATION—THE UNCONSCIOUS 236

XIX. RESISTANCE AND SUPPRESSION 248

XX. THE SEXUAL LIFE OF MAN 262

DEVELOPMENT OF THE LIBIDO AND SEXUAL

XXI. ORGANIZATIONS 277

XXII. THEORIES OF DEVELOPMENT AND REGRESSION—ETIOLOGY 294

XXIII. THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SYMPTOMS 311

XXIV. ORDINARY NERVOUSNESS 328

XXV. FEAR AND ANXIETY 340

XXVI. THE LIBIDO THEORY AND NARCISM 356

XXVII. TRANSFERENCE 372

XXVIII. ANALYTICAL THERAPY 388

INDEX 403

PART I

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ERRORS

 FIRST LECTURE

INTRODUCTION

IDO not know how familiar some of you may be, either from your reading or
from hearsay, with psychoanalysis. But, in keeping with the title of these
lectures—A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis—I am obliged to proceed
as though you knew nothing about this subject, and stood in need of
preliminary instruction.
To be sure, this much I may presume that you do know, namely, that
psychoanalysis is a method of treating nervous patients medically. And just at
this point I can give you an example to illustrate how the procedure in this field
is precisely the reverse of that which is the rule in medicine. Usually when we
introduce a patient to a medical technique which is strange to him we minimize
its difficulties and give him confident promises concerning the result of the
treatment. When, however, we undertake psychoanalytic treatment with a
neurotic patient we proceed differently. We hold before him the difficulties of
the method, its length, the exertions and the sacrifices which it will cost him;
and, as to the result, we tell him that we make no definite promises, that the
result depends on his conduct, on his understanding, on his adaptability, on his
perseverance. We have, of course, excellent motives for conduct which seems
so perverse, and into which you will perhaps gain insight at a later point in
these lectures.
Do not be offended, therefore, if, for the present, I treat you as I treat these
neurotic patients. Frankly, I shall dissuade you from coming to hear me a
second time. With this intention I shall show what imperfections are necessarily
involved in the teaching of psychoanalysis and what difficulties stand in the
way of gaining a personal judgment. I shall show you how the whole trend of
your previous training and all your accustomed mental habits must unavoidably
have made you opponents of psychoanalysis, and how much you must
overcome in yourselves in order to master this instinctive opposition. Of course
I cannot predict how much psychoanalytic understanding you will gain from
my lectures, but I can promise this, that by listening to them you will not learn
how to undertake a psychoanalytic treatment or how to carry one to
completion. Furthermore, should I find anyone among you who does not feel
satisfied with a cursory acquaintance with psychoanalysis, but who would like
to enter into a more enduring relationship with it, I shall not only dissuade him,
but I shall actually warn him against it. As things now stand, a person would,
by such a choice of profession, ruin his every chance of success at a university,
and if he goes out into the world as a practicing physician, he will find himself
in a society which does not understand his aims, which regards him with
suspicion and hostility, and which turns loose upon him all the malicious spirits
which lurk within it.
However, there are always enough individuals who are interested in anything
which may be added to the sum total of knowledge, despite such
inconveniences. Should there be any of this type among you, and should they
ignore my dissuasion and return to the next of these lectures, they will be
welcome. But all of you have the right to know what these difficulties of
psychoanalysis are to which I have alluded.
First of all, we encounter the difficulties inherent in the teaching and
exposition of psychoanalysis. In your medical instruction you have been
accustomed to visual demonstration. You see the anatomical specimen, the
precipitate in the chemical reaction, the contraction of the muscle as the result
of the stimulation of its nerves. Later the patient is presented to your senses; the
symptoms of his malady, the products of the pathological processes, in many
cases even the cause of the disease is shown in isolated state. In the surgical
department you are made to witness the steps by which one brings relief to the
patient, and are permitted to attempt to practice them. Even in psychiatry, the
demonstration affords you, by the patient's changed facial play, his manner of
speech and his behavior, a wealth of observations which leave far-reaching
impressions. Thus the medical teacher preponderantly plays the role of a guide
and instructor who accompanies you through a museum in which you contract
an immediate relationship to the exhibits, and in which you believe yourself to
have been convinced through your own observation of the existence of the new
things you see.
Unfortunately, everything is different in psychoanalysis. In psychoanalysis
nothing occurs but the interchange of words between the patient and the
physician. The patient talks, tells of his past experiences and present
impressions, complains, confesses his wishes and emotions. The physician
listens, tries to direct the thought processes of the patient, reminds him of
things, forces his attention into certain channels, gives him explanations and
observes the reactions of understanding or denial which he calls forth in the
patient. The uneducated relatives of our patients—persons who are impressed
only by the visible and tangible, preferably by such procedure as one sees in the
moving picture theatres—never miss an opportunity of voicing their scepticism
as to how one can "do anything for the malady through mere talk." Such
thinking, of course, is as shortsighted as it is inconsistent. For these are the very
persons who know with such certainty that the patients "merely imagine" their
symptoms. Words were originally magic, and the word retains much of its old
magical power even to-day. With words one man can make another blessed, or
drive him to despair; by words the teacher transfers his knowledge to the pupil;
by words the speaker sweeps his audience with him and determines its
judgments and decisions. Words call forth effects and are the universal means
of influencing human beings. Therefore let us not underestimate the use of
words in psychotherapy, and let us be satisfied if we may be auditors of the
words which are exchanged between the analyst and his patient.
But even that is impossible. The conversation of which the psychoanalytic
treatment consists brooks no auditor, it cannot be demonstrated. One can, of
course, present a neurasthenic or hysteric to the students in a psychiatric
lecture. He tells of his complaints and symptoms, but of nothing else. The
communications which are necessary for the analysis are made only under the
conditions of a special affective relationship to the physician; the patient would
become dumb as soon as he became aware of a single impartial witness. For
these communications concern the most intimate part of his psychic life,
everything which as a socially independent person he must conceal from
others; these communications deal with everything which, as a harmonious
personality, he will not admit even to himself.
You cannot, therefore, "listen in" on a psychoanalytic treatment. You can
only hear of it. You will get to know psychoanalysis, in the strictest sense of
the word, only by hearsay. Such instruction even at second hand, will place you
in quite an unusual position for forming a judgment. For it is obvious that
everything depends on the faith you are able to put in the instructor.
Imagine that you are not attending a psychiatric, but an historical lecture, and
that the lecturer is telling you about the life and martial deeds of Alexander the
Great. What would be your reasons for believing in the authenticity of his
statements? At first sight, the condition of affairs seems even more unfavorable
than in the case of psychoanalysis, for the history professor was as little a
participant in Alexander's campaigns as you were; the psychoanalyst at least
tells you of things in connection with which he himself has played some role.
But then the question turns on this—what set of facts can the historian marshal
in support of his position? He can refer you to the accounts of ancient authors,
who were either contemporaries themselves, or who were at least closer to the
events in question; that is, he will refer you to the books of Diodor, Plutarch,
Arrian, etc. He can place before you pictures of the preserved coins and statues
of the king and can pass down your rows a photograph of the Pompeiian
mosaics of the battle of Issos. Yet, strictly speaking, all these documents prove
only that previous generations already believed in Alexander's existence and in
the reality of his deeds, and your criticism might begin anew at this point. You
will then find that not everything recounted of Alexander is credible, or capable
of proof in detail; yet even then I cannot believe that you will leave the lecture
hall a disbeliever in the reality of Alexander the Great. Your decision will be
determined chiefly by two considerations; firstly, that the lecturer has no
conceivable motive for presenting as truth something which he does not
himself believe to be true, and secondly, that all available histories present the
events in approximately the same manner. If you then proceed to the
verification of the older sources, you will consider the same data, the possible
motives of the writers and the consistency of the various parts of the evidence.
The result of the examination will surely be convincing in the case of
Alexander. It will probably turn out differently when applied to individuals like
Moses and Nimrod. But what doubts you might raise against the credibility of
the psychoanalytic reporter you will see plainly enough upon a later occasion.
At this point you have a right to raise the question, "If there is no such thing
as objective verification of psychoanalysis, and no possibility of demonstrating
it, how can one possibly learn psychoanalysis and convince himself of the truth
of its claims?" The fact is, the study is not easy and there are not many persons
who have learned psychoanalysis thoroughly; but nevertheless, there is a
feasible way. Psychoanalysis is learned, first of all, from a study of one's self,
through the study of one's own personality. This is not quite what is ordinarily
called self-observation, but, at a pinch, one can sum it up thus. There is a whole
series of very common and universally known psychic phenomena, which, after
some instruction in the technique of psychoanalysis, one can make the subject
matter of analysis in one's self. By so doing one obtains the desired conviction
of the reality of the occurrences which psychoanalysis describes and of the
correctness of its fundamental conception. To be sure, there are definite limits
imposed on progress by this method. One gets much further if one allows
himself to be analyzed by a competent analyst, observes the effect of the
analysis on his own ego, and at the same time makes use of the opportunity to
become familiar with the finer details of the technique of procedure. This
excellent method is, of course, only practicable for one person, never for an
entire class.
There is a second difficulty in your relation to psychoanalysis for which I
cannot hold the science itself responsible, but for which I must ask you to take
the responsibility upon yourselves, ladies and gentlemen, at least in so far as
you have hitherto pursued medical studies. Your previous training has given
your mental activity a definite bent which leads you far away from
psychoanalysis. You have been trained to reduce the functions of an organism
and its disorders anatomically, to explain them in terms of chemistry and
physics and to conceive them biologically, but no portion of your interest has
been directed to the psychic life, in which, after all, the activity of this
wonderfully complex organism culminates. For this reason psychological
thinking has remained strange to you and you have accustomed yourselves to
regard it with suspicion, to deny it the character of the scientific, to leave it to
the laymen, poets, natural philosophers and mystics. Such a delimitation is
surely harmful to your medical activity, for the patient will, as is usual in all
human relationships, confront you first of all with his psychic facade; and I am
afraid your penalty will be this, that you will be forced to relinquish a portion
of the therapeutic influence to which you aspire, to those lay physicians, nature-
cure fakers and mystics whom you despise.
I am not overlooking the excuse, whose existence one must admit, for this
deficiency in your previous training. There is no philosophical science of
therapy which could be made practicable for your medical purpose. Neither
speculative philosophy nor descriptive psychology nor that so-called
experimental psychology which allies itself with the physiology of the sense
organs as it is taught in the schools, is in a position to teach you anything useful
concerning the relation between the physical and the psychical or to put into
your hand the key to the understanding of a possible disorder of the psychic
functions. Within the field of medicine, psychiatry does, it is true, occupy itself
with the description of the observed psychic disorders and with their grouping
into clinical symptom-pictures; but in their better hours the psychiatrists
themselves doubt whether their purely descriptive account deserves the name of
a science. The symptoms which constitute these clinical pictures are known
neither in their origin, in their mechanism, nor in their mutual relationship.
There are either no discoverable corresponding changes of the anatomical
organ of the soul, or else the changes are of such a nature as to yield no
enlightenment. Such psychic disturbances are open to therapeutic influence
only when they can be identified as secondary phenomena of an otherwise
organic affection.
Here is the gap which psychoanalysis aims to fill. It prepares to give
psychiatry the omitted psychological foundation, it hopes to reveal the common
basis from which, as a starting point, constant correlation of bodily and psychic
disturbances becomes comprehensible. To this end, it must divorce itself from
every anatomical, chemical or physiological supposition which is alien to it. It
must work throughout with purely psychological therapeutic concepts, and just
for that reason I fear that it will at first seem strange to you.
I will not make you, your previous training, or your mental bias share the
guilt of the next difficulty. With two of its assertions, psychoanalysis offends
the whole world and draws aversion upon itself. One of these assertions offends
an intellectual prejudice, the other an aesthetic-moral one. Let us not think too
lightly of these prejudices; they are powerful things, remnants of useful, even
necessary, developments of mankind. They are retained through powerful
affects, and the battle against them is a hard one.
The first of these displeasing assertions of psychoanalysis is this, that the
psychic processes are in themselves unconscious, and that those which are
conscious are merely isolated acts and parts of the total psychic life. Recollect
that we are, on the contrary, accustomed to identify the psychic with the
conscious. Consciousness actually means for us the distinguishing
characteristic of the psychic life, and psychology is the science of the content of
consciousness. Indeed, so obvious does this identification seem to us that we
consider its slightest contradiction obvious nonsense, and yet psychoanalysis
cannot avoid raising this contradiction; it cannot accept the identity of the
conscious with the psychic. Its definition of the psychic affirms that they are
processes of the nature of feeling, thinking, willing; and it must assert that there
is such a thing as unconscious thinking and unconscious willing. But with this
assertion psychoanalysis has alienated, to start with, the sympathy of all friends
of sober science, and has laid itself open to the suspicion of being a fantastic
mystery study which would build in darkness and fish in murky waters. You,
however, ladies and gentlemen, naturally cannot as yet understand what
justification I have for stigmatizing as a prejudice so abstract a phrase as this
one, that "the psychic is consciousness." You cannot know what evaluation can
have led to the denial of the unconscious, if such a thing really exists, and what
advantage may have resulted from this denial. It sounds like a mere argument
over words whether one shall say that the psychic coincides with the conscious
or whether one shall extend it beyond that, and yet I can assure you that by the
acceptance of unconscious processes you have paved the way for a decisively
new orientation in the world and in science.
Just as little can you guess how intimate a connection this initial boldness of
psychoanalysis has with the one which follows. The next assertion which
psychoanalysis proclaims as one of its discoveries, affirms that those instinctive
impulses which one can only call sexual in the narrower as well as in the wider
sense, play an uncommonly large role in the causation of nervous and mental
diseases, and that those impulses are a causation which has never been
adequately appreciated. Nay, indeed, psychoanalysis claims that these same
sexual impulses have made contributions whose value cannot be overestimated
to the highest cultural, artistic and social achievements of the human mind.
According to my experience, the aversion to this conclusion of
psychoanalysis is the most significant source of the opposition which it
encounters. Would you like to know how we explain this fact? We believe that
civilization was forged by the driving force of vital necessity, at the cost of
instinct-satisfaction, and that the process is to a large extent constantly repeated
anew, since each individual who newly enters the human community repeats
the sacrifices of his instinct-satisfaction for the sake of the common good.
Among the instinctive forces thus utilized, the sexual impulses play a
significant role. They are thereby sublimated, i.e., they are diverted from their
sexual goals and directed to ends socially higher and no longer sexual. But this
result is unstable. The sexual instincts are poorly tamed. Each individual who
wishes to ally himself with the achievements of civilization is exposed to the
danger of having his sexual instincts rebel against this sublimation. Society can
conceive of no more serious menace to its civilization than would arise through
the satisfying of the sexual instincts by their redirection toward their original
goals. Society, therefore, does not relish being reminded of this ticklish spot in
its origin; it has no interest in having the strength of the sexual instincts
recognized and the meaning of the sexual life to the individual clearly
delineated. On the contrary, society has taken the course of diverting attention
from this whole field. This is the reason why society will not tolerate the
above-mentioned results of psychoanalytic research, and would prefer to brand
it as aesthetically offensive and morally objectionable or dangerous. Since,
however, one cannot attack an ostensibly objective result of scientific inquiry
with such objections, the criticism must be translated to an intellectual level if it
is to be voiced. But it is a predisposition of human nature to consider an
unpleasant idea untrue, and then it is easy to find arguments against it. Society
thus brands what is unpleasant as untrue, denying the conclusions of
psychoanalysis with logical and pertinent arguments. These arguments
originate from affective sources, however, and society holds to these prejudices
against all attempts at refutation.
However, we may claim, ladies and gentlemen, that we have followed no
bias of any sort in making any of these contested statements. We merely wished
to state facts which we believe to have been discovered by toilsome labor. And
we now claim the right unconditionally to reject the interference in scientific
research of any such practical considerations, even before we have investigated
whether the apprehension which these considerations are meant to instil are
justified or not.
These, therefore, are but a few of the difficulties which stand in the way of
your occupation with psychoanalysis. They are perhaps more than enough for a
beginning. If you can overcome their deterrent impression, we shall continue.

SECOND LECTURE

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ERRORS

WE begin with an investigation, not with hypotheses. To this end we

choose certain phenomena which are very frequent, very familiar and very little
heeded, and which have nothing to do with the pathological, inasmuch as they
can be observed in every normal person. I refer to the errors which an
individual commits—as for example, errors of speech in which he wishes to
say something and uses the wrong word; or those which happen to him in
writing, and which he may or may not notice; or the case of misreading, in
which one reads in the print or writing something different from what is
actually there. A similar phenomenon occurs in those cases of mishearing what
is said to one, where there is no question of an organic disturbance of the
auditory function. Another series of such occurrences is based on forgetfulness
—but on a forgetfulness which is not permanent, but temporary, as for instance
when one cannot think of a name which one knows and always recognizes; or
when one forgets to carry out a project at the proper time but which one
remembers again later, and therefore has only forgotten for a certain interval. In
a third class this characteristic of transience is lacking, as for example in
mislaying things so that they cannot be found again, or in the analogous case of
losing things. Here we are dealing with a kind of forgetfulness to which one
reacts differently from the other cases, a forgetfulness at which one is surprised
and annoyed, instead of considering it comprehensible. Allied with these
phenomena is that of erroneous ideas—in which the element of transience is
again prominent, inasmuch as for a while one believes something which, before
and after that time, one knows to be untrue—and a number of similar
phenomena of different designations.
These are all occurrences whose inner connection is expressed in the use of
the same prefix of designation.[1] They are almost all unimportant, generally
temporary and without much significance in the life of the individual. It is only
rarely that one of them, such as the phenomenon of losing things, attains to a
certain practical importance. For that reason also they do not attract much
attention, they arouse only weak affects.
It is, therefore, to these phenomena that I would now direct your attention.
But you will object, with annoyance: "There are so many sublime riddles in the
external world, just as there are in the narrower world of the psychic life, and
so many wonders in the field of psychic disturbances which demand and
deserve elucidation, that it really seems frivolous to waste labor and interest on
such trifles. If you can explain to us how an individual with sound eyes and
ears can, in broad daylight, see and hear things that do not exist, or why another
individual suddenly believes himself persecuted by those whom up to that time
he loved best, or defend, with the most ingenious arguments, delusions which
must seem nonsense to any child, then we will be willing to consider
psychoanalysis seriously. But if psychoanalysis can do nothing better than to
occupy us with the question of why a speaker used the wrong word, or why a
housekeeper mislaid her keys, or such trifles, then we know something better to
do with our time and interest."
My reply is: "Patience, ladies and gentlemen. I think your criticism is not on
the right track. It is true that psychoanalysis cannot boast that it has never
occupied itself with trifles. On the contrary, the objects of its observations are
generally those simple occurrences which the other sciences have thrown aside
as much too insignificant, the waste products of the phenomenal world. But are
you not confounding, in your criticism, the sublimity of the problems with the
conspicuousness of their manifestations? Are there not very important things
which under certain circumstances, and at certain times, can betray themselves
only by very faint signs? I could easily cite a great many instances of this kind.
From what vague signs, for instance, do the young gentlemen of this audience
conclude that they have won the favor of a lady? Do you await an explicit
declaration, an ardent embrace, or does not a glance, scarcely perceptible to
others, a fleeting gesture, the prolonging of a hand-shake by one second,
suffice? And if you are a criminal lawyer, and engaged in the investigation of a
murder, do you actually expect the murderer to leave his photograph and
address on the scene of the crime, or would you, of necessity, content yourself
with fainter and less certain traces of that individual? Therefore, let us not
undervalue small signs; perhaps by means of them we will succeed in getting
on the track of greater things. I agree with you that the larger problems of the
world and of science have the first claim on our interest. But it is generally of
little avail to form the definite resolution to devote oneself to the investigation
of this or that problem. Often one does not know in which direction to take the
next step. In scientific research it is more fruitful to attempt what happens to be
before one at the moment and for whose investigation there is a discoverable
method. If one does that thoroughly without prejudice or predisposition, one
may, with good fortune, and by virtue of the connection which links each thing
to every other (hence also the small to the great) discover even from such
modest research a point of approach to the study of the big problems."
Thus would I answer, in order to secure your attention for the consideration
of these apparently insignificant errors made by normal people. At this point,
we will question a stranger to psychoanalysis and ask him how he explains
these occurrences.
His first answer is sure to be, "Oh, they are not worth an explanation; they
are merely slight accidents." What does he mean by this? Does he mean to
assert that there are any occurrences so insignificant that they fall out of the
causal sequence of things, or that they might just as well be something different
from what they are? If any one thus denies the determination of natural
phenomena at one such point, he has vitiated the entire scientific viewpoint.
One can then point out to him how much more consistent is the religious point
of view, when it explicitly asserts that "No sparrow falls from the roof without
God's special wish." I imagine our friend will not be willing to follow his first
answer to its logical conclusion; he will interrupt and say that if he were to
study these things he would probably find an explanation for them. He will say
that this is a case of slight functional disturbance, of an inaccurate psychic act
whose causal factors can be outlined. A man who otherwise speaks correctly
may make a slip of the tongue—when he is slightly ill or fatigued; when he is
excited; when his attention is concentrated on something else. It is easy to
prove these statements. Slips of the tongue do really occur with special
frequency when one is tired, when one has a headache or when one is
indisposed. Forgetting proper names is a very frequent occurrence under these
circumstances. Many persons even recognize the imminence of an indisposition
by the inability to recall proper names. Often also one mixes up words or
objects during excitement, one picks up the wrong things; and the forgetting of
projects, as well as the doing of any number of other unintentional acts,
becomes conspicuous when one is distracted; in other words, when one's
attention is concentrated on other things. A familiar instance of such distraction
is the professor in Fliegende Blätter, who takes the wrong hat because he is
thinking of the problems which he wishes to treat in his next book. Each of us
knows from experience some examples of how one can forget projects which
one has planned and promises which one has made, because an experience has
intervened which has preoccupied one deeply.
This seems both comprehensible and irrefutable. It is perhaps not very
interesting, not as we expected it to be. But let us consider this explanation of
errors. The conditions which have been cited as necessary for the occurrence of
these phenomena are not all identical. Illness and disorders of circulation afford
a physiological basis. Excitement, fatigue and distraction are conditions of a
different sort, which one could designate as psycho-physiological. About these
latter it is easy to theorize. Fatigue, as well as distraction, and perhaps also
general excitement, cause a scattering of the attention which can result in the
act in progress not receiving sufficient attention. This act can then be more
easily interrupted than usual, and may be inexactly carried out. A slight illness,
or a change in the distribution of blood in the central organ of the nervous
system, can have the same effect, inasmuch as it influences the determining
factor, the distribution of attention, in a similar way. In all cases, therefore, it is
a question of the effects of a distraction of the attention, caused either by
organic or psychic factors.
But this does not seem to yield much of interest for our psychoanalytic
investigation. We might even feel tempted to give up the subject. To be sure,
when we look more closely we find that not everything squares with this
attention theory of psychological errors, or that at any rate not everything can
be directly deduced from it. We find that such errors and such forgetting occur
even when people are not fatigued, distracted or excited, but are in every way
in their normal state; unless, in consequence of these errors, one were to
attribute to them an excitement which they themselves do not acknowledge.
Nor is the mechanism so simple that the success of an act is assured by an
intensification of the attention bestowed upon it, and endangered by its
diminution. There are many acts which one performs in a purely automatic way
and with very little attention, but which are yet carried out quite successfully.
The pedestrian who scarcely knows where he is going, nevertheless keeps to
the right road and stops at his destination without having gone astray. At least,
this is the rule. The practiced pianist touches the right keys without thinking of
them. He may, of course, also make an occasional mistake, but if automatic
playing increased the likelihood of errors, it would be just the virtuoso whose
playing has, through practice, become most automatic, who would be the most
exposed to this danger. Yet we see, on the contrary, that many acts are most
successfully carried out when they are not the objects of particularly
concentrated attention, and that the mistakes occur just at the point where one is
most anxious to be accurate—where a distraction of the necessary attention is
therefore surely least permissible. One could then say that this is the effect of
the "excitement," but we do not understand why the excitement does not
intensify the concentration of attention on the goal that is so much desired. If in
an important speech or discussion anyone says the opposite of what he means,
then that can hardly be explained according to the psycho-physiological or the
attention theories.
There are also many other small phenomena accompanying these errors,
which are not understood and which have not been rendered comprehensible to
us by these explanations. For instance, when one has temporarily forgotten a
name, one is annoyed, one is determined to recall it and is unable to give up the
attempt. Why is it that despite his annoyance the individual cannot succeed, as
he wishes, in directing his attention to the word which is "on the tip of his
tongue," and which he instantly recognizes when it is pronounced to him? Or,
to take another example, there are cases in which the errors multiply, link
themselves together, substitute for each other. The first time one forgets an
appointment; the next time, after having made a special resolution not to forget
it, one discovers that one has made a mistake in the day or hour. Or one tries by
devious means to remember a forgotten word, and in the course of so doing
loses track of a second name which would have been of use in finding the first.
If one then pursues this second name, a third gets lost, and so on. It is notorious
that the same thing can happen in the case of misprints, which are of course to
be considered as errors of the typesetter. A stubborn error of this sort is said to
have crept into a Social-Democratic paper, where, in the account of a certain
festivity was printed, "Among those present was His Highness, the Clown
Prince." The next day a correction was attempted. The paper apologized and
said, "The sentence should, of course, have read 'The Clown Prince.'" One likes
to attribute these occurrences to the printer's devil, to the goblin of the
typesetting machine, and the like—figurative expressions which at least go
beyond a psycho-physiological theory of the misprint.
I do not know if you are acquainted with the fact that one can provoke slips
of the tongue, can call them forth by suggestion, as it were. An anecdote will
serve to illustrate this. Once when a novice on the stage was entrusted with the
important role in The Maid of Orleans of announcing to the King, "Connétable
sheathes his sword," the star played the joke of repeating to the frightened
beginner during the rehearsal, instead of the text, the following, "Comfortable
sends back his steed,"[2] and he attained his end. In the performance the
unfortunate actor actually made his début with this distorted announcement;
even after he had been amply warned against so doing, or perhaps just for that
reason.
These little characteristics of errors are not exactly illuminated by the theory
of diverted attention. But that does not necessarily prove the whole theory
wrong. There is perhaps something missing, a complement by the addition of
which the theory would be made completely satisfactory. But many of the
errors themselves can be regarded from another aspect.
Let us select slips of the tongue, as best suited to our purposes. We might
equally well choose slips of the pen or of reading. But at this point, we must
make clear to ourselves the fact that so far we have inquired only as to when
and under what conditions one's tongue slips, and have received an answer on
this point only. One can, however, direct one's interest elsewhere and ask why
one makes just this particular slip and no other; one can consider what the slip
results in. You must realize that as long as one does not answer this question—
does not explain the effect produced by the slip—the phenomenon in its
psychological aspect remains an accident, even if its physiological explanation
has been found. When it happens that I commit a slip of the tongue, I could
obviously make any one of an infinite number of slips, and in place of the one
right word say any one of a thousand others, make innumerable distortions of
the right word. Now, is there anything which forces upon me in a specific
instance just this one special slip out of all those which are possible, or does
that remain accidental and arbitrary, and can nothing rational be found in
answer to this question?
Two authors, Meringer and Mayer (a philologist and a psychiatrist) did
indeed in 1895 make the attempt to approach the problem of slips of the tongue
from this side. They collected examples and first treated them from a purely
descriptive standpoint. That, of course, does not yet furnish any explanation,
but may open the way to one. They differentiated the distortions which the
intended phrase suffered through the slip, into: interchanges of positions of
words, interchanges of parts of words, perseverations, compoundings and
substitutions. I will give you examples of these authors' main categories. It is a
case of interchange of the first sort if someone says "the Milo of Venus" instead
of "the Venus of Milo." An example of the second type of interchange, "I had a
blush of rood to the head" instead of "rush of blood"; a perseveration would be
the familiar misplaced toast, "I ask you to join me in hiccoughing the health of
our chief."[3] These three forms of slips are not very frequent. You will find
those cases much more frequent in which the slip results from a drawing
together or compounding of syllables; for example, a gentleman on the street
addresses a lady with the words, "If you will allow me, madame, I should be
very glad to inscort you."[4] In the compounded word there is obviously besides
the word "escort," also the word "insult" (and parenthetically we may remark
that the young man will not find much favor with the lady). As an example of
the substitution, Meringer and Mayer cite the following: "A man says, 'I put the
specimens in the letterbox,' instead of 'in the hot-bed,' and the like."[5]
The explanation which the two authors attempt to formulate on the basis of
this collection of examples is peculiarly inadequate. They hold that the sounds
and syllables of words have different values, and that the production and
perception of more highly valued syllables can interfere with those of lower
values. They obviously base this conclusion on the cases of fore-sounding and
perseveration which are not at all frequent; in other cases of slips of the tongue
the question of such sound priorities, if any exist, does not enter at all. The
most frequent cases of slips of the tongue are those in which instead of a certain
word one says another which resembles it; and one may consider this
resemblance sufficient explanation. For example, a professor says in his initial
lecture, "I am not inclined to evaluate the merits of my predecessor."[6] Or
another professor says, "In the case of the female genital, despite
many temptations ... I mean many attempts ... etc."[7]
The most common, and also the most conspicuous form of slips of the
tongue, however, is that of saying the exact opposite of what one meant to say.
In such cases, one goes far afield from the problem of sound relations and
resemblance effects, and can cite, instead of these, the fact that opposites have
an obviously close relationship to each other, and have particularly close
relations in the psychology of association. There are historical examples of this
sort. A president of our House of Representatives once opened the assembly
with the words, "Gentlemen, I declare a quorum present, and herewith declare
the assembly closed."
Similar, in its trickiness, to the relation of opposites is the effect of any other
facile association which may under certain circumstances arise most
inopportunely. Thus, for instance, there is the story which relates that on the
occasion of a festivity in honor of the marriage of a child of H. Helmholtz with
a child of the well-known discoverer and captain of industry, W. Siemon, the
famous physiologist Dubois-Reymond was asked to speak. He concluded his
undoubtedly sparkling toast with the words, "Success to the new firm—
Siemens and—Halski!" That, of course, was the name of the well-known old
firm. The association of the two names must have been about as easy for a
native of Berlin as "Weber and Fields" to an American.
Thus we must add to the sound relations and word resemblances the
influence of word associations. But that is not all. In a series of cases, an
explanation of the observed slip is unsuccessful unless we take into account
what phrase had been said or even thought previously. This again makes it a
case of perseveration of the sort stressed by Meringer, but of a longer duration.
I must admit, I am on the whole of the impression that we are further than ever
from an explanation of slips of the tongue!
However, I hope I am not wrong when I say that during the above
investigation of these examples of slips of the tongue, we have all obtained a
new impression on which it will be of value to dwell. We sought the general
conditions under which slips of the tongue occur, and then the influences which
determine the kind of distortion resulting from the slip, but we have in no way
yet considered the effect of the slip of the tongue in itself, without regard to its
origin. And if we should decide to do so we must finally have the courage to
assert, "In some of the examples cited, the product of the slip also makes
sense." What do we mean by "it makes sense"? It means, I think, that the
product of the slip has itself a right to be considered as a valid psychic act
which also has its purpose, as a manifestation having content and meaning.
Hitherto we have always spoken of errors, but now it seems as if sometimes the
error itself were quite a normal act, except that it has thrust itself into the place
of some other expected or intended act.
In isolated cases this valid meaning seems obvious and unmistakable. When
the president with his opening words closes the session of the House of
Representatives, instead of opening it, we are inclined to consider this error
meaningful by reason of our knowledge of the circumstances under which the
slip occurred. He expects no good of the assembly, and would be glad if he
could terminate it immediately. The pointing out of this meaning, the
interpretation of this error, gives us no difficulty. Or a lady, pretending to
admire, says to another, "I am sure you must have messed up this charming hat
yourself."[8] No scientific quibbles in the world can keep us from discovering
in this slip the idea "this hat is a mess." Or a lady who is known for her
energetic disposition, relates, "My husband asked the doctor to what diet he
should keep. But the doctor said he didn't need any diet, he should eat and drink
whatever I want." This slip of tongue is quite an unmistakable expression of a
consistent purpose.
Ladies and gentlemen, if it should turn out that not only a few cases of slips
of the tongue and of errors in general, but the larger part of them, have a
meaning, then this meaning of errors of which we have hitherto made no
mention, will unavoidably become of the greatest interest to us and will, with
justice, force all other points of view into the background. We could then
ignore all physiological and psycho-physiological conditions and devote
ourselves to the purely psychological investigations of the sense, that is, the
meaning, the purpose of these errors. To this end therefore we will not fail,
shortly, to study a more extensive compilation of material.
But before we undertake this task, I should like to invite you to follow
another line of thought with me. It has repeatedly happened that a poet has
made use of slips of the tongue or some other error as a means of poetic
presentation. This fact in itself must prove to us that he considers the error, the
slip of the tongue for instance, as meaningful; for he creates it on purpose, and
it is not a case of the poet committing an accidental slip of the pen and then
letting his pen-slip stand as a tongue-slip of his character. He wants to make
something clear to us by this slip of the tongue, and we may examine what it is,
whether he wishes to indicate by this that the person in question is distracted or
fatigued. Of course, we do not wish to exaggerate the importance of the fact
that the poet did make use of a slip to express his meaning. It could
nevertheless really be a psychic accident, or meaningful only in very rare cases,
and the poet would still retain the right to infuse it with meaning through his
setting. As to their poetic use, however, it would not be surprising if we should
glean more information concerning slips of the tongue from the poet than from
the philologist or the psychiatrist.
Such an example of a slip of the tongue occurs in Wallenstein (Piccolomini,
Act 1, Scene 5). In the previous scene, Max Piccolomini has most passionately
sided with the Herzog, and dilated ardently on the blessings of peace which
disclosed themselves to him during the trip on which he accompanied
Wallenstein's daughter to the camp. He leaves his father and the courtier,
Questenberg, plunged in deepest consternation. And then the fifth scene
continues:

Q.  

Alas! Alas! and stands it so?

What friend! and do we let him go away

In this delusion—let him go away?

 Not call him back immediately, not open

His eyes upon the spot?

OCTAVIO  
.
    (Recovering himself out of a deep study)

He has now opened mine,

And I see more than pleases me.

Q.  

What is it?

OCTAVIO  
.
A curse on this journey!

Q.  

But why so? What is it?

OCTAVIO  
.
Come, come along, friend! I must follow up

The ominous track immediately. Mine eyes

Are opened now, and I must use them. Come!

    (Draws Q. on with him.)

 Q.  

What now? Where go you then?

OCTAVIO  
.
    (Hastily.) To her herself

Q.  

To—

OCTAVIO  
.
    (Interrupting him and correcting himself.)

To the duke. Come, let us go—.

Octavio meant to say, "To him, to the lord," but his tongue slips and through
his words "to her" he betrays to us, at least, the fact that he had quite clearly
recognized the influence which makes the young war hero dream of peace.
A still more impressive example was found by O. Rank in Shakespeare. It
occurs in the Merchant of Venice, in the famous scene in which the fortunate
suitor makes his choice among the three caskets; and perhaps I can do no better
than to read to you here Rank's short account of the incident:
"A slip of the tongue which occurs in Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice, Act
III, Scene II, is exceedingly delicate in its poetic motivation and technically
brilliant in its handling. Like the slip in Wallenstein quoted by Freud
(Psychopathology of Everyday Life, 2d ed., p. 48), it shows that the poets well
know the meaning of these errors and assume their comprehensibility to the
audience. Portia, who by her father's wish has been bound to the choice of a
husband by lot, has so far escaped all her unfavored suitors through the fortunes
of chance. Since she has finally found in Bassanio the suitor to whom she is
attached, she fears that he, too, will choose the wrong casket. She would like to
tell him that even in that event he may rest assured of her love, but is prevented
from so doing by her oath. In this inner conflict the poet makes her say to the
welcome suitor:
 PORTIA: 

I pray you tarry; pause a day or two,

Before you hazard; for, in choosing wrong

I lose your company; therefore, forbear a while:

There's something tells me, (but it is not love)

I would not lose you: * * *

* * * I could teach you

How to choose right, but then I am forsworn,

So will I never be: so may you miss me;

But if you do, you'll make me wish a sin

That I had been forsworn. Beshrew your eyes.

They have o'erlook'd me, and divided me;

One half of me is yours, the other half yours,

Mine own, I would say: but if mine, then yours,

And so all yours.

Just that, therefore, which she meant merely to indicate faintly to him or
really to conceal from him entirely, namely that even before the choice of the
lot she was his and loved him, this the poet—with admirable psychological
delicacy of feeling—makes apparent by her slip; and is able, by this artistic
device, to quiet the unbearable uncertainty of the lover, as well as the equal
suspense of the audience as to the issue of the choice."
Notice, at the end, how subtly Portia reconciles the two declarations which
are contained in the slip, how she resolves the contradiction between them and
finally still manages to keep her promise:

"* * * but if mine, then yours,

And so all yours."

Another thinker, alien to the field of medicine, accidentally disclosed the

meaning of errors by an observation which has anticipated our attempts at
explanation. You all know the clever satires of Lichtenberg (1742-1749), of
which Goethe said, "Where he jokes, there lurks a problem concealed." Not
infrequently the joke also brings to light the solution of the problem.
Lichtenberg mentions in his jokes and satiric comments the remark that he
always read "Agamemnon" for "angenommen,"[9] so intently had he read
Homer. Herein is really contained the whole theory of misreadings.
At the next session we will see whether we can agree with the poets in their
conception of the meaning of psychological errors.

THIRD LECTURE

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ERRORS—(Continued)

AT the last session we conceived the idea of considering the error, not in its
relation to the intended act which it distorted, but by itself alone, and we
received the impression that in isolated instances it seems to betray a meaning
of its own. We declared that if this fact could be established on a larger scale,
then the meaning of the error itself would soon come to interest us more than
an investigation of the circumstances under which the error occurs.
Let us agree once more on what we understand by the "meaning" of a
psychic process. A psychic process is nothing more than the purpose which it
serves and the position which it holds in a psychic sequence. We can also
substitute the word "purpose" or "intention" for "meaning" in most of our
investigations. Was it then only a deceptive appearance or a poetic
exaggeration of the importance of an error which made us believe that we
recognized a purpose in it?
 Let us adhere faithfully to the illustrative example of slips of the tongue and
let us examine a larger number of such observations. We then find whole
categories of cases in which the intention, the meaning of the slip itself, is
clearly manifest. This is the case above all in those examples in which one says
the opposite of what one intended. The president said, in his opening address,
"I declare the meeting closed." His intention is certainly not ambiguous. The
meaning and purpose of his slip is that he wants to terminate the meeting. One
might point the conclusion with the remark "he said so himself." We have only
taken him at his word. Do not interrupt me at this point by remarking that this
is not possible, that we know he did not want to terminate the meeting but to
open it, and that he himself, whom we have just recognized as the best judge of
his intention, will affirm that he meant to open it. In so doing you forget that we
have agreed to consider the error entirely by itself. Its relation to the intention
which it distorts is to be discussed later. Otherwise you convict yourself of an
error in logic by which you smoothly conjure away the problem under
discussion; or "beg the question," as it is called in English.
In other cases in which the speaker has not said the exact opposite of what he
intended, the slip may nevertheless express an antithetical meaning. "I am
not inclined to appreciate the merits of my predecessor." "Inclined" is not the
opposite of "in a position to," but it is an open betrayal of intent in sharpest
contradiction to the attempt to cope gracefully with the situation which the
speaker is supposed to meet.
In still other cases the slip simply adds a second meaning to the one intended.
The sentence then sounds like a contradiction, an abbreviation, a condensation
of several sentences. Thus the lady of energetic disposition, "He may eat and
drink whatever I please." The real meaning of this abbreviation is as though the
lady had said, "He may eat and drink whatever he pleases. But what does it
matter what he pleases! It is I who do the pleasing." Slips of the tongue often
give the impression of such an abbreviation. For example, the anatomy
professor, after his lecture on the human nostril, asks whether the class has
thoroughly understood, and after a unanimous answer in the affirmative, goes
on to say: "I can hardly believe that is so, since the people who understand the
human nostril can, even in a city of millions, be counted on one finger—I
mean, on the fingers of one hand." The abbreviated sentence here also has its
meaning: it expresses the idea that there is only one person who thoroughly
understands the subject.
In contrast to these groups of cases are those in which the error does not itself
express its meaning, in which the slip of the tongue does not in itself convey
anything intelligible; cases, therefore, which are in sharpest opposition to our
expectations. If anyone, through a slip of the tongue, distorts a proper name, or
puts together an unusual combination of syllables, then this very common
occurrence seems already to have decided in the negative the question of
whether all errors contain a meaning. Yet closer inspection of these examples
discloses the fact that an understanding of such a distortion is easily possible,
indeed, that the difference between these unintelligible cases and the previous
comprehensible ones is not so very great.
A man who was asked how his horse was, answered, "Oh, it may stake—it
may take another month." When asked what he really meant to say, he
explained that he had been thinking that it was a sorry business and the coming
together of "take" and "sorry" gave rise to "stake." (Meringer and Mayer.)
Another man was telling of some incidents to which he had objected, and
went on, "and then certain facts were re-filed." Upon being questioned, he
explained that he meant to stigmatize these facts as "filthy." "Revealed" and
"filthy" together produced the peculiar "re-filled." (Meringer and Mayer.)
You will recall the case of the young man who wished to "inscort" an
unknown lady. We took the liberty of resolving this word construction into the
two words "escort" and "insult," and felt convinced of this interpretation
without demanding proof of it. You see from these examples that even slips can
be explained through the concurrence, the interference, of two speeches of
different intentions. The difference arises only from the fact that in the one type
of slip the intended speech completely crowds out the other, as happens in
those slips where the opposite is said, while in the other type the intended
speech must rest content with so distorting or modifying the other as to result in
mixtures which seem more or less intelligible in themselves.
We believe that we have now grasped the secret of a large number of slips of
the tongue. If we keep this explanation in mind we will be able to understand
still other hitherto mysterious groups. In the case of the distortion of names, for
instance, we cannot assume that it is always an instance of competition between
two similar, yet different names. Still, the second intention is not difficult to
guess. The distorting of names occurs frequently enough not as a slip of the
tongue, but as an attempt to give the name an ill-sounding or debasing
character. It is a familiar device or trick of insult, which persons of culture early
learned to do without, though they do not give it up readily. They often clothe it
in the form of a joke, though, to be sure, the joke is of a very low order. Just to
cite a gross and ugly example of such a distortion of a name, I mention the fact
that the name of the President of the French Republic, Poincaré, has been at
times, lately, transformed into "Schweinskarré." It is therefore easy to assume
that there is also such an intention to insult in the case of other slips of the
tongue which result in the distortion of a name. In consequence of our
adherence to this conception, similar explanations force themselves upon us, in
the case of slips of the tongue whose effect is comical or absurd. "I call upon
you to hiccough the health of our chief."[10] Here the solemn atmosphere is
unexpectedly disturbed by the introduction of a word that awakens an
unpleasant image; and from the prototype of certain expressions of insult and
offense we cannot but suppose that there is an intention striving for expression
which is in sharp contrast to the ostensible respect, and which could be
expressed about as follows, "You needn't believe this. I'm not really in earnest.
I don't give a whoop for the fellow—etc." A similar trick which passes for a
slip of the tongue is that which transforms a harmless word into one which is
indecent and obscene.[11]
We know that many persons have this tendency of intentionally making
harmless words obscene for the sake of a certain lascivious pleasure it gives
them. It passes as wit, and we always have to ask about a person of whom we
hear such a thing, whether he intended it as a joke or whether it occurred as a
slip of the tongue.
Well, here we have solved the riddle of errors with relatively little trouble!
They are not accidents, but valid psychic acts. They have their meaning; they
arise through the collaboration—or better, the mutual interference—of two
different intentions. I can well understand that at this point you want to swamp
me with a deluge of questions and doubts to be answered and resolved before
we can rejoice over this first result of our labors. I truly do not wish to push you
to premature conclusions. Let us dispassionately weigh each thing in turn, one
after the other.
What would you like to say? Whether I think this explanation is valid for all
cases of slips of the tongue or only for a certain number? Whether one can
extend this same conception to all the many other errors—to mis-reading, slips
of the pen, forgetting, picking up the wrong object, mislaying things, etc? In the
face of the psychic nature of errors, what meaning is left to the factors of
fatigue, excitement, absent-mindedness and distraction of attention? Moreover,
it is easy to see that of the two competing meanings in an error, one is always
public, but the other not always. But what does one do in order to guess the
latter? And when one believes one has guessed it, how does one go about
proving that it is not merely a probable meaning, but that it is the only correct
meaning? Is there anything else you wish to ask? If not, then I will continue. I
would remind you of the fact that we really are not much concerned with the
errors themselves, but we wanted only to learn something of value to
psychoanalysis from their study. Therefore, I put the question: What are these
purposes or tendencies which can thus interfere with others, and what relation
is there between the interfering tendencies and those interfered with? Thus our
labor really begins anew, after the explanation of the problem.
Now, is this the explanation of all tongue slips? I am very much inclined to
think so and for this reason, that as often as one investigates a case of a slip of
the tongue, it reduces itself to this type of explanation. But on the other hand,
one cannot prove that a slip of the tongue cannot occur without this mechanism.
It may be so; for our purposes it is a matter of theoretical indifference, since the
conclusions which we wish to draw by way of an introduction to
psychoanalysis remain untouched, even if only a minority of the cases of
tongue slips come within our conception, which is surely not the case. I shall
anticipate the next question, of whether or not we may extend to other types of
errors what we have gleaned from slips of the tongue, and answer it in the
affirmative. You will convince yourselves of that conclusion when we turn our
attention to the investigation of examples of pen slips, picking up wrong
objects, etc. I would advise you, however, for technical reasons, to postpone
this task until we shall have investigated the tongue slip itself more thoroughly.
The question of what meaning those factors which have been placed in the
foreground by some authors,—namely, the factors of circulatory disturbances,
fatigue, excitement, absent-mindedness, the theory of the distraction of
attention—the question of what meaning those factors can now have for us if
we accept the above described psychic mechanism of tongue slips, deserves a
more detailed answer. You will note that we do not deny these factors. In fact,
it is not very often that psychoanalysis denies anything which is asserted on the
other side. As a rule psychoanalysis merely adds something to such assertions
and occasionally it does happen that what had hitherto been overlooked, and
was newly added by psychoanalysis, is just the essential thing. The influence
on the occurrence of tongue slips of such physiological predispositions as result
from slight illness, circulatory disturbances and conditions of fatigue, should be
acknowledged without more ado. Daily personal experience can convince you
of that. But how little is explained by such an admission! Above all, they are
not necessary conditions of the errors. Slips of the tongue are just as possible
when one is in perfect health and normal condition. Bodily factors, therefore,
have only the value of acting by way of facilitation and encouragement to the
peculiar psychic mechanism of a slip of the tongue.
To illustrate this relationship, I once used a simile which I will now repeat
because I know of no better one as substitute. Let us suppose that some dark
night I go past a lonely spot and am there assaulted by a rascal who takes my
watch and purse; and then, since I did not see the face of the robber clearly, I
make my complaint at the nearest police station in the following words:
"Loneliness and darkness have just robbed me of my valuables." The police
commissioner could then say to me: "You seem to hold an unjustifiably
extreme mechanistic conception. Let us rather state the case as follows: Under
cover of darkness, and favored by the loneliness, an unknown robber seized
your valuables. The essential task in your case seems to me to be to discover
the robber. Perhaps we can then take his booty from him again."
 Such psycho-physiological moments as excitement, absent-mindedness and
distracted attention, are obviously of small assistance to us for the purpose of
explanation. They are mere phrases, screens behind which we will not be
deterred from looking. The question is rather what in such cases has caused the
excitement, the particular diversion of attention. The influence of syllable
sounds, word resemblances and the customary associations which words arouse
should also be recognized as having significance. They facilitate the tongue slip
by pointing the path which it can take. But if I have a path before me, does that
fact as a matter of course determine that I will follow it? After all, I must have a
stimulus to make me decide for it, and, in addition, a force which carries me
forward on this path. These sound and word relationships therefore serve also
only to facilitate the tongue slip, just as the bodily dispositions facilitate them;
they cannot give the explanation for the word itself. Just consider, for example,
the fact that in an enormously large number of cases, my lecturing is not
disturbed by the fact that the words which I use recall others by their sound
resemblance, that they are intimately associated with their opposites, or arouse
common associations. We might add here the observation of the philosopher
Wundt, that slips of the tongue occur when, in consequence of bodily fatigue,
the tendency to association gains the upper hand over the intended speech. This
would sound very plausible if it were not contradicted by experiences which
proved that from one series of cases of tongue-slips bodily stimuli were absent,
and from another, the association stimuli were absent.
However, your next question is one of particular interest to me, namely: in
what way can one establish the existence of the two mutually antagonistic
tendencies? You probably do not suspect how significant this question is. It is
true, is it not, that one of the two tendencies, the tendency which suffers the
interference, is always unmistakable? The person who commits the error is
aware of it and acknowledges it. It is the other tendency, what we call the
interfering tendency, which causes doubt and hesitation. Now we have already
learned, and you have surely not forgotten, that these tendencies are, in a series
of cases, equally plain. That is indicated by the effect of the slip, if only we
have the courage to let this effect be valid in itself. The president who said the
opposite of what he meant to say made it clear that he wanted to open the
meeting, but equally clear that he would also have liked to terminate it. Here
the meaning is so plain that there is nothing left to be interpreted. But the other
cases in which the interfering tendency merely distorts the original, without
bringing itself to full expression—how can one guess the interfering meaning
from the distortion?
By a very sure and simple method, in the first series of cases, namely, by the
same method by which one establishes the existence of the meaning interfered
with. The latter is immediately supplied by the speaker, who instantly adds the
originally intended expression. "It may stake—no, it may take another month."
Now we likewise ask him to express the interfering meaning; we ask him:
"Now, why did you first say stake?" He answers, "I meant to say—'This is
a sorry business.'" And in the other case of the tongue slip—re-filed—the
subject also affirms that he meant to say "It is a fil-thy business," but then
moderated his expression and turned it into something else. Thus the discovery
of the interfering meaning was here as successful as the discovery of the one
interfered with. Nor did I unintentionally select as examples cases which were
neither related nor explained by me or by a supporter of my theories. Yet a
certain investigation was necessary in both cases in order to obtain the solution.
One had to ask the speaker why he made this slip, what he had to say about it.
Otherwise he might perhaps have passed it by without seeking to explain it.
When questioned, however, he furnished the explanation by means of the first
thing that came to his mind. And now you see, ladies and gentlemen, that this
slight investigation and its consequence are already a psychoanalysis, and the
prototype of every psychoanalytic investigation which we shall conduct more
extensively at a later time.
Now, am I unduly suspicious if I suspect that at the same moment in which
psychoanalysis emerges before you, your resistance to psychoanalysis also
raises its head? Are you not anxious to raise the objection that the information
given by the subject we questioned, and who committed the slip, is not proof
sufficient? He naturally has the desire, you say, to meet the challenge, to
explain the slip, and hence he says the first thing he can think of if it seems
relevant. But that, you say, is no proof that this is really the way the slip
happened. It might be so, but it might just as well be otherwise, you say.
Something else might have occurred to him which might have fitted the case
just as well and better.
It is remarkable how little respect, at bottom, you have for a psychic fact!
Imagine that someone has decided to undertake the chemical analysis of a
certain substance, and has secured a sample of the substance, of a certain
weight—so and so many milligrams. From this weighed sample certain definite
conclusions can be drawn. Do you think it would ever occur to a chemist to
discredit these conclusions by the argument that the isolated substance might
have had some other weight? Everyone yields to the fact that it was just this
weight and no other, and confidently builds his further conclusions upon that
fact. But when you are confronted by the psychic fact that the subject, when
questioned, had a certain idea, you will not accept that as valid, but say some
other idea might just as easily have occurred to him! The trouble is that you
believe in the illusion of psychic freedom and will not give it up. I regret that
on this point I find myself in complete opposition to your views.
 Now you will relinquish this point only to take up your resistance at another
place. You will continue, "We understand that it is the peculiar technique of
psychoanalysis that the solution of its problems is discovered by the analyzed
subject himself. Let us take another example, that in which the speaker calls
upon the assembly 'to hiccoughthe health of their chief.' The interfering idea in
this case, you say, is the insult. It is that which is the antagonist of the
expression of conferring an honor. But that is mere interpretation on your part,
based on observations extraneous to the slip. If in this case you question the
originator of the slip, he will not affirm that he intended an insult, on the
contrary, he will deny it energetically. Why do you not give up your
unverifiable interpretation in the face of this plain objection?"
Yes, this time you struck a hard problem. I can imagine the unknown
speaker. He is probably an assistant to the guest of honor, perhaps already a
minor official, a young man with the brightest prospects. I will press him as to
whether he did not after all feel conscious of something which may have
worked in opposition to the demand that he do honor to the chief. What a fine
success I'll have! He becomes impatient and suddenly bursts out on me, "Look
here, you'd better stop this cross-examination, or I'll get unpleasant. Why, you'll
spoil my whole career with your suspicions. I simply said 'auf-gestossen'
instead of 'an-gestossen,' because I'd already said 'auf' twice in the same
sentence. It's the thing that Meringer calls a perservation, and there's no other
meaning that you can twist out of it. Do you understand me? That's all." H'm,
this is a surprising reaction, a really energetic denial. I see that there is nothing
more to be obtained from the young man, but I also remark to myself that he
betrays a strong personal interest in having his slip mean nothing. Perhaps you,
too, agree that it is not right for him immediately to become so rude over a
purely theoretical investigation, but, you will conclude, he really must know
what he did and did not mean to say.
Really? Perhaps that's open to question nevertheless.
But now you think you have me. "So that is your technique," I hear you say.
"When the person who has committed a slip gives an explanation which fits
your theory, then you declare him the final authority on the subject. 'He says so
himself!' But if what he says does not fit into your scheme, then you suddenly
assert that what he says does not count, that one need not believe him."
Yet that is certainly true. I can give you a similar case in which the procedure
is apparently just as monstrous. When a defendant confesses to a deed, the
judge believes his confession. But if he denies it, the judge does not believe
him. Were it otherwise, there would be no way to administer the law, and
despite occasional miscarriages you must acknowledge the value of this
system.
 Well, are you then the judge, and is the person who committed the slip a
defendant before you? Is a slip of the tongue a crime?
Perhaps we need not even decline this comparison. But just see to what far-
reaching differences we have come by penetrating somewhat into the
seemingly harmless problems of the psychology of errors, differences which at
this stage we do not at all know how to reconcile. I offer you a preliminary
compromise on the basis of the analogy of the judge and the defendant. You
will grant me that the meaning of an error admits of no doubt when the subject
under analysis acknowledges it himself. I in turn will admit that a direct proof
for the suspected meaning cannot be obtained if the subject denies us the
information; and, of course, that is also the case when the subject is not present
to give us the information. We are, then, as in the case of the legal procedure,
dependent on circumstances which make a decision at one time seem more, and
at another time, less probable to us. At law, one has to declare a defendant
guilty on circumstantial evidence for practical reasons. We see no such
necessity; but neither are we forced to forego the use of these circumstances. It
would be a mistake to believe that a science consists of nothing but
conclusively proved theorems, and any such demand would be unjust. Only a
person with a mania for authority, a person who must replace his religious
catechism with some other, even though it be scientific, would make such a
demand. Science has but few apodeictic precepts in its catechism; it consists
chiefly of assertions which it has developed to certain degrees of probability. It
is actually a symptom of scientific thinking if one is content with these
approximations of certainty and is able to carry on constructive work despite
the lack of the final confirmation.
But where do we get the facts for our interpretations, the circumstances for
our proof, when the further remarks of the subject under analysis do not
themselves elucidate the meaning of the error? From many sources. First of all,
from the analogy with phenomena extraneous to the psychology of errors; as,
for example, when we assert that the distortion of a name as a slip of the tongue
has the same insulting significance as an intentional name distortion. We get
them also from the psychic situation in which the error occurred, from our
knowledge of the character of the person who committed the error, from the
impressions which that person received before making the error, and to which
he may possibly have reacted with this error. As a rule, what happens is that we
find the meaning of the error according to general principles. It is then only a
conjecture, a suggestion as to what the meaning may be, and we then obtain our
proof from examination of the psychic situation. Sometimes, too, it happens
that we have to wait for subsequent developments, which have announced
themselves, as it were, through the error, in order to find our conjecture
verified.
 I cannot easily give you proof of this if I have to limit myself to the field of
tongue slips, although even here there are a few good examples. The young
man who wished to "inscort" the lady is certainly shy; the lady whose husband
may eat and drink whatever she wants I know to be one of those energetic
women who know how to rule in the home. Or take the following case: At a
general meeting of the Concordia Club, a young member delivers a vehement
speech in opposition, in the course of which he addresses the officers of the
society as: "Fellow committee lenders." We will conjecture that some
conflicting idea militated in him against his opposition, an idea which was in
some way based on a connection with money lending. As a matter of fact, we
learn from our informant that the speaker was in constant money difficulties,
and had attempted to raise a loan. As a conflicting idea, therefore, we may
safely interpolate the idea, "Be more moderate in your opposition, these are the
same people who are to grant you the loan."
But I can give you a wide selection of such circumstantial proof if I delve
into the wide field of other kinds of error.
If anyone forgets an otherwise familiar proper name, or has difficulty in
retaining it in his memory despite all efforts, then the conclusion lies close at
hand, that he has something against the bearer of this name and does not like to
think of him. Consider in this connection the following revelation of the
psychic situation in which this error occurs:
"A Mr. Y. fell in love, without reciprocation, with a lady who soon after
married a Mr. X. In spite of the fact that Mr. Y. has known Mr. X. a long time,
and even has business relations with him, he forgets his name over and over
again, so that he found it necessary on several occasions to ask other people the
man's name when he wanted to write to Mr. X."[12]
Mr. Y. obviously does not want to have his fortunate rival in mind under any
condition. "Let him never be thought of."
Another example: A lady makes inquiries at her doctor's concerning a mutual
acquaintance, but speaks of her by her maiden name. She has forgotten her
married name. She admits that she was much displeased by the marriage, and
could not stand this friend's husband.[13]
Later we shall have much to say in other relations about the matter of
forgetting names. At present we are predominantly interested in the psychic
situation in which the lapse of memory occurs.
The forgetting of projects can quite commonly be traced to an antagonistic
current which does not wish to carry out the project. We psychoanalysts are not
alone in holding this view, but this is the general conception to which all
persons subscribe the daily affairs, and which they first deny in theory. The
patron who makes apologies to his protegé, saying that he has forgotten his
requests, has not squared himself with his protegé. The protegé immediately
thinks: "There's nothing to that; he did promise but he really doesn't want to do
it." Hence, daily life also proscribes forgetting, in certain connections, and the
difference between the popular and the psychoanalytic conception of these
errors appears to be removed. Imagine a housekeeper who receives her guest
with the words: "What, you come to-day? Why, I had totally forgotten that I
had invited you for to-day"; or the young man who might tell his sweetheart
that he had forgotten to keep the rendezvous which they planned. He is sure not
to admit it, it were better for him to invent the most improbable excuses on the
spur of the moment, hindrances which prevented him from coming at that time,
and which made it impossible for him to communicate the situation to her. We
all know that in military matters the excuse of having forgotten something is
useless, that it protects one from no punishment; and we must consider this
attitude justified. Here we suddenly find everyone agreed that a certain error is
significant, and everyone agrees what its meaning is. Why are they not
consistent enough to extend this insight to the other errors, and fully to
acknowledge them? Of course, there is also an answer to this.
If the meaning of this forgetting of projects leaves room for so little doubt
among laymen, you will be less surprised to find that poets make use of these
errors in the same sense. Those of you who have seen or read Shaw's Caesar
and Cleopatra will recall that Caesar, when departing in the last scene, is
pursued by the idea that there was something more he intended to do, but that
he had forgotten it. Finally he discovers what it is: to take leave of Cleopatra.
This small device of the author is meant to ascribe to the great Caesar a
superiority which he did not possess, and to which he did not at all aspire. You
can learn from historical sources that Caesar had Cleopatra follow him to
Rome, and that she was staying there with her little Caesarion when Caesar was
murdered, whereupon she fled the city.
The cases of forgetting projects are as a rule so clear that they are of little use
for our purpose, i.e., discovering in the psychic situation circumstantial
evidence of the meaning of the error. Let us, therefore, turn to a particularly
ambiguous and untransparent error, that of losing and mislaying objects. That
we ourselves should have a purpose in losing an object, an accident frequently
so painful, will certainly seem incredible to you. But there are many instances
similar to the following: A young man loses the pencil which he had liked very
much. The day before he had received a letter from his brother-in-law, which
concluded with the words, "For the present I have neither the inclination nor
the time to be a party to your frivolity and your idleness."[14] It so happened
that the pencil had been a present from this brother-in-law. Without this
coincidence we could not, of course, assert that the loss involved any intention
to get rid of the gift. Similar cases are numerous. Persons lose objects when
they have fallen out with the donors, and no longer wish to be reminded of
them. Or again, objects may be lost if one no longer likes the things
themselves, and wants to supply oneself with a pretext for substituting other
and better things in their stead. Letting a thing fall and break naturally shows
the same intention toward that object. Can one consider it accidental when a
school child just before his birthday loses, ruins or breaks his belongings, for
example his school bag or his watch?
He who has frequently experienced the annoyance of not being able to find
something which he has himself put away, will also be unwilling to believe
there was any intent behind the loss. And yet the examples are not at all rare in
which the attendant circumstances of the mislaying point to a tendency
temporarily or permanently to get rid of the object. Perhaps the most beautiful
example of this sort is the following: A young man tells me: "A few years ago a
misunderstanding arose in my married life. I felt my wife was too cool and
even though I willingly acknowledged her excellent qualities, we lived without
any tenderness between us. One day she brought me a book which she had
thought might interest me. I thanked her for this attention, promised to read the
book, put it in a handy place, and couldn't find it again. Several months passed
thus, during which I occasionally remembered this mislaid book and tried in
vain to find it. About half a year later my beloved mother, who lived at a
distance from us, fell ill. My wife leftthe house in order to nurse her mother-in-
law. The condition of the patient became serious, and gave my wife an
opportunity of showing her best side. One evening I came home filled with
enthusiasm and gratitude toward my wife. I approached my writing desk,
opened a certain drawer with no definite intention but as if with
somnambulistic certainty, and the first thing I found is the book so long
mislaid."
With the cessation of the motive, the inability to find the mislaid object also
came to an end.
Ladies and gentlemen, I could increase this collection of examples
indefinitely. But I do not wish to do so here. In my Psychopathology of
Everyday Life (first published in 1901), you will find only too many instances
for the study of errors.[15]
All these examples demonstrate the same thing repeatedly: namely, they
make it seem probable that errors have a meaning, and show how one may
guess or establish that meaning from the attendant circumstances. I limit myself
to-day because we have confined ourselves to the purpose of profiting in the
preparation for psychoanalysis from the study of these phenomena. I must,
however, still go into two additional groups of observations, into the
accumulated and combined errors and into the confirmation of our
interpretations by means of subsequent developments.
 The accumulated and combined errors are surely the fine flower of their
species. If we were interested only in proving that errors may have a meaning,
we would limit ourselves to the accumulated and combined errors in the first
place, for here the meaning is unmistakable, even to the dullest intelligence,
and can force conviction upon the most critical judgment. The accumulation of
manifestations betrays a stubbornness such as could never come about by
accident, but which fits closely the idea of design. Finally, the interchange of
certain kinds of error with each other shows us what is the important and
essential element of the error, not its form or the means of which it avails itself,
but the purpose which it serves and which is to be achieved by the most various
paths. Thus I will give you a case of repeated forgetting. Jones recounts that he
once allowed a letter to lie on his writing desk several days for reasons
quite unknown. Finally he made up his mind to mail it; but it was returned from
the dead letter office, for he had forgotten to address it. After he had addressed
it he took it to the post office, but this time without a stamp. At this point he
finally had to admit to himself his aversion against sending the letter at all.
In another case a mistake is combined with mislaying an object. A lady is
traveling to Rome with her brother-in-law, a famous artist. The visitor is much
fêted by the Germans living in Rome, and receives as a gift, among other
things, a gold medal of ancient origin. The lady is vexed by the fact that her
brother-in-law does not sufficiently appreciate the beautiful object. After she
leaves her sister and reaches her home, she discovers when unpacking that she
has brought with her—how, she does not know—the medal. She immediately
informs her brother-in-law of this fact by letter, and gives him notice that she
will send the medal back to Rome the next day. But on the following day, the
medal has been so cleverly mislaid that it can neither be found nor sent, and at
this point it begins to dawn upon the lady that her "absent-mindedness" means,
namely, that she wants to keep the object for herself.[16]
I have already given you an example of a combination of forgetfulness and
error in which someone first forgot a rendezvous and then, with the firm
intention of not forgetting it a second time, appeared at the wrong hour. A quite
analogous case was told me from his own experience, by a friend who pursues
literary interests in addition to his scientific ones. He said: "A few years ago I
accepted the election to the board of a certain literary society, because I hoped
that the society could at some time be of use to me in helping obtain the
production of my drama, and, despite my lack of interest, I took part in the
meetings every Friday. A few months ago I received the assurance of a
production in the theatre in F., and since that time it happens regularly that I
forget the meetings of that society. When I read your article on these things, I
was ashamed of my forgetfulness, reproached myself with the meanness of
staying away now that I no longer need these people and determined to be sure
not to forget next Friday. I kept reminding myself of this resolution until I
carried it out and stood before the door of the meeting room. To my
astonishment, it was closed, the meeting was already over; for I had mistaken
the day. It was already Saturday."
It would be tempting enough to collect similar observations, but I will go no
further; I will let you glance instead upon those cases in which our
interpretation has to wait for its proof upon future developments.
The chief condition of these cases is conceivably that the existing psychic
situation is unknown to us or inaccessible to our inquiries. At that time our
interpretation has only the value of a conjecture to which we ourselves do not
wish to grant too much weight. Later, however, something happens which
shows us how justified was our interpretation even at that time. I was once the
guest of a young married couple and heard the young wife laughingly tell of a
recent experience, of how on the day after her return from her honeymoon she
had hunted up her unmarried sister again in order to go shopping with her, as in
former times, while her husband went to his business. Suddenly she noticed a
gentleman on the other side of the street, and she nudged her sister, saying,
"Why look, there goes Mr. K." She had forgotten that this gentleman was her
husband of some weeks' standing. I shuddered at this tale but did not dare to
draw the inference. The little anecdote did not occur to me again until a year
later, after this marriage had come to a most unhappy end.
A. Maeder tells of a lady who, the day before her wedding, forgot to try on
her wedding dress and to the despair of the dressmaker only remembered it
later in the evening. He adds in connection with this forgetfulness the fact that
she divorced her husband soon after. I know a lady now divorced from her
husband, who, in managing her fortune, frequently signed documents with her
maiden name, and this many years before she really resumed it. I know of other
women who lost their wedding rings on their honeymoon and also know that
the course of the marriage gave a meaning to this accident. And now one more
striking example with a better termination. It is said that the marriage of a
famous German chemist did not take place because he forgot the hour of the
wedding, and instead of going to the church went to the laboratory. He was
wise enough to rest satisfied with this one attempt, and died unmarried at a ripe
old age.
Perhaps the idea has also come to you that in these cases mistakes have taken
the place of the Omina or omens of the ancients. Some of the Omina really
were nothing more than mistakes; for example, when a person stumbled or fell
down. Others, to be sure, bore the characteristics of objective occurrences
rather than that of subjective acts. But you would not believe how difficult it
sometimes is to decide in a specific instance whether the act belongs to the one
or the other group. It so frequently knows how to masquerade as a passive
experience.
Everyone of us who can look back over a longer or shorter life experience
will probably say that he might have spared himself many disappointments and
painful surprises if he had found the courage and decision to interpret as omens
the little mistakes which he made in his intercourse with people, and to
consider them as indications of the intentions which were still being kept
secret. As a rule, one does not dare do this. One would feel as though he were
again becoming superstitious via a detour through science. But not all omens
come true, and you will understand from our theories that they need not all
come true.

FOURTH LECTURE

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ERRORS—(Conclusion)

WE may certainly put it down as the conclusion of our labors up to this

point that errors have a meaning, and we may make this conclusion the basis of
our further investigations. Let me stress the fact once more that we do not
assert—and for our purposes need not assert—that every single mistake which
occurs is meaningful, although I consider that probable. It will suffice us if we
prove the presence of such a meaning with relative frequency in the various
forms of errors. These various forms, by the way, behave differently in this
respect. In the cases of tongue slips, pen slips, etc., the occurrences may take
place on a purely physiological basis. In the group based on forgetfulness
(forgetting names or projects, mislaying objects, etc.) I cannot believe in such a
basis. There does very probably exist a type of case in which the loss of objects
should be recognized as unintentional. Of the mistakes which occur in daily
life, only a certain portion can in any way be brought within our conception.
You must keep this limitation in mind when we start henceforth from the
assumption that mistakes are psychic acts and arise through the mutual
interference of two intentions.
Herein we have the first result of psychoanalysis. Psychology hitherto knew
nothing of the occurrence of such interferences and the possibility that they
might have such manifestations as a consequence. We have widened the
province of the world of psychic phenomena quite considerably, and have
brought into the province of psychology phenomena which formerly were not
attributed to it.
 Let us tarry a moment longer over the assertion that errors are psychic acts.
Does such an assertion contain more than the former declaration that they have
a meaning? I do not believe so. On the contrary, it is rather more indefinite and
open to greater misunderstanding. Everything which can be observed about the
psychic life will on occasion be designated as a psychic phenomenon. But it
will depend on whether the specific psychic manifestations resulted directly
from bodily, organic, material influences, in which case their investigation will
not fall within the province of psychology, or whether it was more immediately
the result of other psychic occurrences back of which, somewhere, the series of
organic influences then begins. We have the latter condition of affairs before us
when we designate a phenomenon as a psychic manifestation, and for that
reason it is more expedient to put our assertion in this form: the phenomena are
meaningful; they have a meaning. By "meaning" we understand significance,
purpose, tendency and position in a sequence of psychic relations.
There are a number of other occurrences which are very closely related to
errors, but which this particular name no longer fits. We call them accidental
and symptomaticacts. They also have the appearance of being unmotivated, the
appearance of insignificance and unimportance, but in addition, and more
plainly, of superfluity. They are differentiated from errors by the absence of
another intention with which they collide and by which they are disturbed. On
the other side they pass over without a definite boundary line into the gestures
and movements which we count among expressions of the emotions. Among
these accidental acts belong all those apparently playful, apparently purposeless
performances in connection with our clothing, parts of our body, objects within
reach, as well as the omission of such performances, and the melodies which
we hum to ourselves. I venture the assertion that all these phenomena are
meaningful and capable of interpretation in the same way as are the errors, that
they are small manifestations of other more important psychic processes, valid
psychic acts. But I do not intend to linger over this new enlargement of the
province of psychic phenomena, but rather to return to the topic of errors, in the
consideration of which the important psychoanalytic inquiries can be worked
out with far greater clarity.
The most interesting questions which we formulated while considering
errors, and which we have not yet answered, are, I presume, the following: We
said that the errors are the result of the mutual interference of two different
intentions, of which the one can be called the intention interfered with, and
the other the interfering intention. The intentions interfered with give rise to no
further questions, but concerning the others we want to know, firstly, what kind
of intentions are these which arise as disturbers of others, and secondly, in what
proportions are the interfering related to the interfered?
 Will you permit me again to take the slip of the tongue as representative of
the whole species and allow me to answer the second question before the first?
The interfering intention in the tongue slip may stand in a significant relation
to the intention interfered with, and then the former contains a contradiction of
the latter, correcting or supplementing it. Or, to take a less intelligible and more
interesting case, the interfering intention has nothing to do with the intention
interfered with.
Proofs for the first of the two relations we can find without trouble in the
examples which we already know and in others similar to those. In almost all
cases of tongue slips where one says the contrary of what he intended, where
the interfering intention expresses the antithesis of the intention interfered with,
the error is the presentation of the conflict between two irreconcilable strivings.
"I declare the meeting opened, but would rather have it closed," is the meaning
of the president's slip. A political paper which has been accused of
corruptibility, defends itself in an article meant to reach a climax in the words:
"Our readers will testify that we have always interceded for the good of all in
the most disinterested manner." But the editor who had been entrusted with the
composition of the defence, wrote, "in the most interested manner." That is, he
thinks "To be sure, I have to write this way, but I know better." A
representative of the people who urges that the Kaiser should be told the truth
"rückhaltlos," hears an inner voice which is frightened by his boldness, and
which through a slip changes the "rückhaltlos" into "rückgratlos."[17]
In the examples familiar to you, which give the impression of contraction and
abbreviation, it is a question of a correction, an addition or continuation by
which the second tendency manifests itself together with the first. "Things were
revealed, but better say it right out, they were filthy, therefore, things
were refiled."[18] "The people who understand this topic can be counted on
the fingers of one hand, but no, there is really only one who understands it;
therefore, counted on one finger." Or, "My husband may eat and drink
whatever he wants. But you know very well that I don't permit him to want
anything; therefore he may eat and drink whatever I want." In all these cases,
therefore, the slip arises from the content of the intention itself, or is connected
with it.
The other type of relationship between the two interfering intentions seems
strange. If the interfering intention has nothing to do with the content of the one
interfered with, where then does it come from and how does it happen to make
itself manifest as interference just at that point? The observation which alone
can furnish an answer here, recognizes the fact that the interference originates
in a thought process which has just previously occupied the person in question
and which then has that after-effect, irrespective of whether it has already
found expression in speech or not. It is therefore really to be designated as
perseveration, but not necessarily as the perseveration of spoken words. Here
also there is no lack of an associative connection between the interfering and
the interfered with, yet it is not given in the content, but artificially restored,
often by means of forced connecting links.
Here is a simple example of this, which I myself observed. In our beautiful
Dolomites, I meet two Viennese ladies who are gotten up as tourists. I
accompany them a short distance and we discuss the pleasures, but also the
difficulties of the tourist's mode of life. One lady admits this way of spending
the day entails much discomfort. "It is true," she says, "that it is not at all
pleasant, when one has tramped all day in the sun, and waist and shirt are
soaked through." At this point in this sentence she suddenly has to overcome a
slight hesitancy. Then she continues: "But then, when one gets nach Hose, and
can change...."[19] We did not analyze this slip, but I am sure you can easily
understand it. The lady wanted to make the enumeration more complete and to
say, "Waist, shirt and drawers." From motives of propriety, the mention of the
drawers (Hose) was suppressed, but in the next sentence of quite independent
content the unuttered word came to light as a distortion of the similar word,
house (Hause).
Now we can turn at last to the long delayed main question, namely, what
kind of intentions are these which get themselves expressed in an unusual way
as interferences of others, intentions within whose great variety we wish
nevertheless to find what is common to them all! If we examine a series of
them to this end, we will soon find that they divide themselves into three
groups. In the first group belong the cases in which the interfering tendency is
known to the speaker, and which, moreover, was felt by him before the slip.
Thus, in the case of the slip "refilled," the speaker not only admits that he
agreed with the judgment "filthy," on the incidents in question, but also that he
had the intention (which he later abandoned) of giving it verbal expression. A
second group is made up of those cases in which the interfering tendency is
immediately recognized by the subject as his own, but in which he is ignorant
of the fact that the interfering tendency was active in him just before the slip.
He therefore accepts our interpretation, yet remains to a certain extent surprised
by it. Examples of this situation can perhaps more easily be found among errors
other than slips of the tongue. In a third group the interpretation of the
interfering intention is energetically denied by the speaker. He not only denies
that the interfering tendency was active in him before the slip, but he wants to
assert that it was at all times completely alien to him. Will you recall the
example of "hiccough," and the absolutely impolite disavowal which I received
at the hands of this speaker by my disclosure of the interfering intention. You
know that so far we have no unity in our conception of these cases. I pay no
attention to the toastmaster's disavowal and hold fast to my interpretation;
while you, I am sure, are yet under the influence of his repudiation and are
considering whether one ought not to forego the interpretation of such slips,
and let them pass as purely physiological acts, incapable of further analysis. I
can imagine what it is that frightens you off. My interpretation draws the
conclusion that intentions of which he himself knows nothing may manifest
themselves in a speaker, and that I can deduce them from the circumstances.
You hesitate before so novel a conclusion and one so full of consequences. I
understand that, and sympathize with you to that extent. But let us make one
thing clear: if you want consistently to carry through the conception of errors
which you have derived from so many examples, you must decide to accept the
above conclusion, even though it be unpleasant. If you cannot do so, you must
give up that understanding of errors which you have so recently won.
Let us tarry a while over the point which unites the three groups, which is
common to the three mechanisms of tongue slips. Fortunately, that is
unmistakable. In the first two groups the interfering tendency is recognized by
the speaker; in the first there is the additional fact that it showed itself
immediately before the slip. In both cases, however, it was suppressed. The
speaker had made up his mind not to convert the interfering tendency into
speech and then the slip of the tongue occurred; that is to say, the suppressed
tendency obtains expression against the speaker's will, in that it changes the
expression of the intention which he permits, mixes itself with it or actually
puts itself in its place. This is, then, the mechanism of the tongue slip.
From my point of view, I can also best harmonize the processes of the third
group with the mechanism here described. I need only assume that these three
groups are differentiated by the different degrees of effectiveness attending the
suppression of an intention. In the first group, the intention is present and
makes itself perceptible before the utterance of the speaker; not until then does
it suffer the suppression for which it indemnifies itself in the slip. In the second
group the suppression extends farther. The intention is no longer perceptible
before the subject speaks. It is remarkable that the interfering intention is in no
way deterred by this from taking part in the causation of the slip. Through this
fact, however, the explanation of the procedure in the third group is simplified
for us. I shall be so bold as to assume that in the error a tendency can manifest
itself which has been suppressed for even a longer time, perhaps a very long
time, which does not become perceptible and which, therefore, cannot be
directly denied by the speaker. But leave the problem of the third group; from
the observation of the other cases, you most draw the conclusion that the
suppression of the existing intention to say something is the indispensable
condition of the occurrence of a slip.
We may now claim that we have made further progress in understanding
errors. We know not only that they are psychic acts, in which we can recognize
meaning and purpose, and that they arise through the mutual interference of
two different intentions, but, in addition, we know that one of these intentions
must have undergone a certain suppression in order to be able to manifest itself
through interference with the other. The interfering intention must itself first be
interfered with before it can become interfering. Naturally, a complete
explanation of the phenomena which we call errors is not attained to by this.
We immediately see further questions arising, and suspect in general that there
will be more occasions for new questions as we progress further. We might, for
example, ask why the matter does not proceed much more simply. If there is an
existing purpose to suppress a certain tendency instead of giving it expression,
then this suppression should be so successful that nothing at all of the latter
comes to light; or it could even fail, so that the suppressed tendency attains to
full expression. But errors are compromise formations. They mean some
success and some failure for each of the two purposes. The endangered
intention is neither completely suppressed nor does it, without regard to
individual cases, come through wholly intact. We can imagine that special
conditions must be existent for the occurrence of such interference or
compromise formations, but then we cannot even conjecture what sort they
may be. Nor do I believe that we can uncover these unknown circumstances
through further penetration into the study of errors. Rather will it be necessary
thoroughly to examine other obscure fields of psychic life. Only the analogies
which we there encounter can give us the courage to draw those assumptions
which are requisite to a more fundamental elucidation of errors. And one thing
more. Even working with small signs, as we have constantly been in the habit
of doing in this province, brings its dangers with it. There is a mental disease,
combined paranoia, in which the utilization of such small signs is practiced
without restriction and I naturally would not wish to give it as my opinion that
these conclusions, built up on this basis, are correct throughout. We can be
protected from such dangers only by the broad basis of our observations, by the
repetition of similar impressions from the most varied fields of psychic life.
We will therefore leave the analysis of errors here. But may I remind you of
one thing more: keep in mind, as a prototype, the manner in which we have
treated these phenomena. You can see from these examples what the purposes
of our psychology are. We do not wish merely to describe the phenomena and
to classify them, but to comprehend them as signs of a play of forces in the
psychic, as expressions of tendencies striving to an end, tendencies which work
together or against one another. We seek a dynamic conception of psychic
phenomena. The perceived phenomena must, in our conception, give way to
those strivings whose existence is only assumed.
Hence we will not go deeper into the problem of errors, but we can still
undertake an expedition through the length of this field, in which we will
reëncounter things familiar to us, and will come upon the tracks of some that
are new. In so doing we will keep to the division which we made in the
beginning of our study, of the three groups of tongue slips, with the related
forms of pen slips, misreadings, mishearings, forgetfulness with its
subdivisions according to the forgotten object (proper names, foreign words,
projects, impressions), and the other faults of mistaking, mislaying and losing
objects. Errors, in so far as they come into our consideration, are grouped in
part with forgetfulness, in part with mistakes.
We have already spoken in such detail of tongue slips, and yet there are still
several points to be added. Linked with tongue slips are smaller effective
phenomena which are not entirely without interest. No one likes to make a slip
of the tongue; often one fails to hear his own slip, though never that of another.
Tongue slips are in a certain sense infectious; it is not at all easy to discuss
tongue slips without falling into slips of the tongue oneself. The most trifling
forms of tongue slips are just the ones which have no particular illumination to
throw on the hidden psychic processes, but are nevertheless not difficult to
penetrate in their motivation. If, for example, anyone pronounces a long vowel
as a short, in consequence of an interference no matter how motivated, he will
for that reason soon after lengthen a short vowel and commit a new slip in
compensation for the earlier one. The same thing occurs when one has
pronounced a double vowel unclearly and hastily; for example, an "eu" or an
"oi" as "ei." The speaker tries to correct it by changing a subsequent "ei" or
"eu" to "oi." In this conduct the determining factor seems to be a certain
consideration for the hearer, who is not to think that it is immaterial to the
speaker how he treats his mother tongue. The second, compensating distortion
actually has the purpose of making the hearer conscious of the first, and of
assuring him that it also did not escape the speaker. The most frequent and
most trifling cases of slips consist in the contractions and foresoundings which
show themselves in inconspicuous parts of speech. One's tongue slips in a
longer speech to such an extent that the last word of the intended speech is said
too soon. That gives the impression of a certain impatience to be finished with
the sentence and gives proof in general of a certain resistance to
communicating this sentence or speech as a whole. Thus we come to borderline
cases in which the differences between the psychoanalytic and the common
physiological conception of tongue slips are blended. We assume that in these
cases there is a tendency which interferes with the intention of the speech. But
it can only announce that it is present, and not what its own intention is. The
interference which it occasions then follows some sound influences or
associative relationship, and may be considered as a distraction of attention
from the intended speech. But neither this disturbance of attention nor the
associative tendency which has been activated, strikes the essence of the
process. This hints, however, at the existence of an intention which interferes
with the purposed speech, an intention whose nature cannot (as is possible in all
the more pronounced cases of tongue slips) this time be guessed from its
effects.
Slips of the pen, to which I now turn, are in agreement with those of the
tongue to the extent that we need expect to gain no new points of view from
them. Perhaps we will be content with a small gleaning. Those very common
little slips of the pen—contractions, anticipations of later words, particularly of
the last words—again point to a general distaste for writing, and to an
impatience to be done; the pronounced effects of pen slips permit the nature
and purpose of the interfering tendency to be recognized. One knows in general
that if one finds a slip of the pen in a letter everything was not as usual with the
writer. What was the matter one cannot always establish. The pen slip is
frequently as little noticed by the person who makes it as the tongue slip. The
following observation is striking: There are some persons who have the habit of
always rereading a letter they have written before sending it. Others do not do
so. But if the latter make an exception and reread the letter, they always have
the opportunity of finding and correcting a conspicuous pen slip. How can that
be explained? This looks as if these persons knew that they had made a slip of
the pen while writing the letter. Shall we really believe that such is the case?
There is an interesting problem linked with the practical significance of the
pen slip. You may recall the case of the murderer H., who made a practice of
obtaining cultures of the most dangerous disease germs from scientific
institutions, by pretending to be a bacteriologist, and who used these cultures to
get his close relatives out of the way in this most modern fashion. This man
once complained to the authorities of such an institution about the
ineffectiveness of the culture which had been sent to him, but committed a pen
slip and instead of the words, "in my attempts on mice and guinea pigs," was
plainly written, "in my attempts on people."[20] This slip even attracted the
attention of the doctors at the institution, but so far as I know, they drew no
conclusion from it. Now what do you think? Might not the doctors better have
accepted the slip as a confession and instituted an investigation through which
the murderer's handiwork would have been blocked in time? In this case was
not ignorance of our conception of errors to blame for an omission of practical
importance? Well, I am inclined to think that such a slip would surely seem
very suspicious to me, but a fact of great importance stands in the way of its
utilization as a confession. The thing is not so simple. The pen slip is surely an
indication, but by itself it would not have been sufficient to instigate an
investigation. That the man is preoccupied with the thought of infecting human
beings, the slip certainly does betray, but it does not make it possible to decide
whether this thought has the value of a clear plan of injury or merely of a
phantasy having no practical consequence. It is even possible that the person
who made such a slip will deny this phantasy with the best subjective
justification and will reject it as something entirely alien to him. Later, when
we give our attention to the difference between psychic and material reality,
you will understand these possibilities even better. Yet this is again a case in
which an error later attained unsuspected significance.
In misreading, we encounter a psychic situation which is clearly
differentiated from that of the tongue slips or pen slips. The one of the two rival
tendencies is here replaced by a sensory stimulus and perhaps for that reason is
less resistant. What one is reading is not a production of one's own psychic
activity, as is something which one intends to write. In a large majority of
cases, therefore, the misreading consists in a complete substitution. One
substitutes another word for the word to be read, and there need be no
connection in meaning between the text and the product of the misreading. In
general, the slip is based upon a word resemblance. Lichtenberg's example of
reading "Agamemnon" for "angenommen"[21] is the best of this group. If one
wishes to discover the interfering tendency which causes the misreading, one
may completely ignore the misread text and can begin the analytic investigation
with the two questions: What is the first idea that occurs in free association to
the product of the misreading, and, in what situation did the misreading occur?
Now and then a knowledge of the latter suffices by itself to explain the
misreading. Take, for example, the individual who, distressed by certain needs,
wanders about in a strange city and reads the word "Closethaus" on a large sign
on the first floor of a house. He has just time to be surprised at the fact that the
sign has been nailed so high up when he discovers that, accurately observed,
the sign reads "Corset-haus." In other cases the misreadings which are
independent of the text require a penetrating analysis which cannot be
accomplished without practice and confidence in the psychoanalytic technique.
But generally it is not a matter of much difficulty to obtain the elucidation of a
misreading. The substituted word, as in the example, "Agamemnon," betrays
without more ado the thought sequence from which the interference results.
In war times, for instance, it is very common for one to read into everything
which contains a similar word structure, the names of the cities, generals and
military expressions which are constantly buzzing around us. In this way,
whatever interests and preoccupies one puts itself in the place of that which is
foreign or uninteresting. The after-effects of thoughts blur the new perceptions.
There are other types of misreadings, in which the text itself arouses the
disturbing tendency, by means of which it is then most often changed into its
opposite. One reads something which is undesired; analysis then convinces one
that an intensive wish to reject what has been read should be made responsible
for the alteration.
 In the first mentioned and more frequent cases of misreading, two factors are
neglected to which we gave an important role in the mechanism of errors: the
conflict of two tendencies and the suppression of one which then indemnifies
itself by producing the error. Not that anything like the opposite occurs in
misreading, but the importunity of the idea content which leads to misreading is
nevertheless much more conspicuous than the suppression to which the latter
may previously have been subjected. Just these two factors are most tangibly
apparent in the various situations of errors of forgetfulness.
Forgetting plans is actually uniform in meaning; its interpretation is, as we
have heard, not denied even by the layman. The tendency interfering with the
plan is always an antithetical intention, an unwillingness concerning which we
need only discover why it does not come to expression in a different and less
disguised manner. But the existence of this unwillingness is not to be doubted.
Sometimes it is possible even to guess something of the motives which make it
necessary for this unwillingness to disguise itself, and it always achieves its
purpose by the error resulting from the concealment, while its rejection would
be certain were it to present itself as open contradiction. If an important change
in the psychic situation occurs between the formulation of the plan and its
execution, in consequence of which the execution of the plan does not come
into question, then the fact that the plan was forgotten is no longer in the class
of errors. One is no longer surprised at it, and one understands that it would
have been superfluous to have remembered the plan; it was then permanently or
temporarily effaced. Forgetting a plan can be called an error only when we
have no reason to believe there was such an interruption.
The cases of forgetting plans are in general so uniform and transparent that
they do not interest us in our investigation. There are two points, however, from
which we can learn something new. We have said that forgetting, that is, the
non-execution of a plan, points to an antipathy toward it. This certainly holds,
but, according to the results of our investigations, the antipathy may be of two
sorts, direct and indirect. What is meant by the latter can best be explained by
one or two examples. If a patron forgets to say a good word for his protegé to a
third person, it may be because the patron is not really very much interested in
the protegé, therefore, has no great inclination to commend him. It is, at any
rate, in this sense that the protegé will construe his patron's forgetfulness. But
the matter may be more complicated. The patron's antipathy to the execution of
the plan may originate in another quarter and fasten upon quite a different
point. It need not have anything to do with the protegé, but may be directed
toward the third person to whom the good word was to have been said. Thus,
you see what doubts here confront the practical application of our
interpretation. The protegé, despite a correct interpretation of the forgetfulness,
stands in danger of becoming too suspicious, and of doing his patron a grave
injustice. Or, if an individual forgets a rendezvous which he has made, and
which he had resolved to keep, the most frequent basis will certainly be the
direct aversion to encountering this person. But analysis might here supply the
information that the interfering intention was not directed against that person,
but against the place in which they were to have met, and which was avoided
because of a painful memory associated with it. Or, if one forgets to mail a
letter, the counter-intention may be directed against the content of that letter,
yet this does not in any way exclude the possibility that the letter is harmless in
itself, and only subject to the counter-intention because something about it
reminds the writer of another letter written previously, which, in fact, did afford
a basis for the antipathy. One can say in such a case that the antipathy has here
transferred itself from that former letter where it was justified to the present one
in which it really has no meaning. Thus you see that one must always exercise
restraint and caution in the application of interpretations, even though the
interpretations are justified. That which is psychologically equivalent may
nevertheless in practice be very ambiguous.
Phenomena such as these will seem very unusual to you. Perhaps you are
inclined to assume that the "indirect" antipathy is enough to characterize the
incident as pathological. Yet I can assure you that it also occurs in a normal and
healthy setting. I am in no way willing to admit the unreliability of our analytic
interpretation. After all, the above-discussed ambiguity of plan-forgetting exists
only so long as we have not attempted an analysis of the case, and are
interpreting it only on the basis of our general suppositions. When we analyze
the person in question, we discover with sufficient certainty in each case
whether or not it is a direct antipathy, or what its origin is otherwise.
A second point is the following: when we find in a large majority of cases
that the forgetting of a plan goes back to an antipathy, we gain courage to
extend this solution to another series of cases in which the analyzed person
does not confirm, but denies, the antipathy which we inferred. Take as an
example the exceedingly frequent incidents of forgetting to return books which
one has borrowed, or forgetting to pay one's bills or debts. We will be so bold
as to accuse the individual in question of intending to keep the books and not to
pay the debts, while he will deny such an intention but will not be in a position
to give us any other explanation of his conduct. Thereupon we insist that he has
the intention, only he knows nothing about it; all we need for our inference is to
have the intention betray itself through the effect of the forgetfulness. The
subject may then repeat that he had merely forgotten it. You now recognize the
situation as one in which we once before found ourselves. If we wish to be
consistent in our interpretation, an interpretation which has been proved as
manifold as it is justified, we will be unavoidably forced to the conclusion that
there are tendencies in a human being which can become effective without his
being conscious of them. By so doing, however, we place ourselves in
opposition to all the views which prevail in daily life and in psychology.
Forgetting proper names and foreign names as well as foreign words can be
traced in the same manner to a counter-intention which aims either directly or
indirectly at the name in question. I have already given you an example of such
direct antipathy. The indirect causation, however, is particularly frequent and
generally necessitates careful analysis for its determination. Thus, for example,
in war times which force us to sacrifice so many of our former inclinations, the
ability to recall proper names also suffers severely in consequence of the most
peculiar connections. A short time ago it happened that I could not reproduce
the name of that harmless Moravian city of Bisenz, and analysis showed that no
direct dislike was to blame, but rather the sound resemblance to the name of the
Bisenzi palace in Orrieto, in which I used to wish I might live. As a motive for
the antagonism to remembering the name, we here encounter for the first time a
principle which will later disclose to us its whole tremendous significance in
the causation of neurotic symptoms, viz., the aversion on the part of the
memory to remembering anything which is connected with unpleasant
experience and which would revive this unpleasantness by a reproduction. This
intention of avoiding unpleasantness in recollections of other psychic acts, the
psychic flight from unpleasantness, we may recognize as the ultimate effective
motive not only for the forgetting of names, but also for many other errors,
such as omissions of action, etc.
Forgetting names does, however, seem to be especially facilitated psycho-
physiologically and therefore also occurs in cases in which the interference of
an unpleasantness-motive cannot be established. If anyone once has a tendency
to forget names, you can establish by analytical investigation that he not only
loses names because he himself does not like them, or because they remind him
of something he does not like, but also because the same name in his mind
belongs to another chain of associations, with which he has more intimate
relations. The name is anchored there, as it were, and denied to the other
associations activated at the moment. If you will recall the tricks of mnemonic
technique you will ascertain with some surprise that one forgets names in
consequence of the same associations which one otherwise purposely forms in
order to save them from being forgotten. The most conspicuous example of this
is afforded by proper names of persons, which conceivably enough must have
very different psychic values for different people. For example, take a first
name, such as Theodore. To one of you it will mean nothing special, to another
it means the name of his father, brother, friend, or his own name. Analytic
experience will then show you that the first person is not in danger of forgetting
that a certain stranger bears this name, while the latter will be constantly
inclined to withhold from the stranger this name which seems reserved for
intimate relationships. Let us now assume that this associative inhibition can
come into contact with the operation of the unpleasantness-principle, and in
addition with an indirect mechanism, and you will be in a position to form a
correct picture of the complexity of causation of this temporary name-
forgetting. An adequate analysis that does justice to the facts, however, will
completely disclose these complications.
Forgetting impressions and experiences shows the working of the tendency
to keep unpleasantness from recollection much more clearly and conclusively
than does the forgetting of names. It does not, of course, belong in its entirety
to the category of errors, but only in so far as it seems to us conspicuous and
unjustified, measured by the measuring stick of our accustomed conception—
thus, for example, where the forgetfulness strikes fresh or important
impressions or impressions whose loss tears a hole in the otherwise well-
remembered sequence. Why and how it is in general that we forget, particularly
why and how we forget experiences which have surely left the deepest
impressions, such as the incidents of our first years of childhood, is quite a
different problem, in which the defense against unpleasant associations plays a
certain role but is far from explaining everything. That unpleasant impressions
are easily forgotten is an indubitable fact. Various psychologists have observed
it, and the great Darwin was so struck by it that he made the "golden rule" for
himself of writing down with particular care observations which seemed
unfavorable to his theory, since he had convinced himself that they were just
the ones which would not stick in his memory.
Those who hear for the first time of this principle of defense against
unpleasant recollections by means of forgetting, seldom fail to raise the
objection that they, on the contrary, have had the experience that just the
painful is hard to forget, inasmuch as it always comes back to mind to torture
the person against his will—as, for example, the recollection of an insult or
humiliation. This fact is also correct, but the objection is not valid. It is
important that one begin betimes to reckon with the fact that the psychic life is
the arena of the struggles and exercises of antagonistic tendencies, or, to
express it in non-dynamic terminology, that it consists of contradictions and
paired antagonisms. Information concerning one specific tendency is of no
avail for the exclusion of its opposite; there is room for both of them. It
depends only on how the opposites react upon each other, what effects will
proceed from the one and what from the other.
Losing and mislaying objects is of especial interest to us because of the
ambiguity and the multiplicity of tendencies in whose services the errors may
act. The common element in all cases is this, that one wished to lose something.
The reasons and purposes thereof vary. One loses an object when it has become
damaged, when one intends to replace it with a better one, when one has ceased
to like it, when it came from a person whose relations to one have become
strained, or when it was obtained under circumstances of which one no longer
wishes to think. The same purpose may be served by letting the object fall, be
damaged or broken. In the life of society it is said to have been found that
unwelcome and illegitimate children are much more often frail than those born
in wedlock. To reach this result we do not need the coarse technique of the so-
called angel-maker. A certain remissness in the care of the child is said to
suffice amply. In the preservation of objects, the case might easily be the same
as with the children.
But things may be singled out for loss without their having forfeited any of
their value, namely, when there exists the intention to sacrifice something to
fate in order to ward off some other dreaded loss. Such exorcisings of fate are,
according to the findings of analysis, still very frequent among us; therefore,
the loss of things is often a voluntary sacrifice. In the same way losing may
serve the purposes of obstinacy or self-punishment. In short, the more distant
motivation of the tendency to get rid of a thing oneself by means of losing it is
not overlooked.
Mistakes, like other errors, are often used to fulfill wishes which one ought to
deny oneself. The purpose is thus masked as fortunate accident; for instance,
one of our friends once took the train to make a call in the suburbs, despite the
clearest antipathy to so doing, and then, in changing cars, made the mistake of
getting into the train which took him back to the city. Or, if on a trip one
absolutely wants to make a longer stay at a half-way station, one is apt to
overlook or miss certain connections, so that he is forced to make the desired
interruption to the trip. Or, as once happened to a patient of mine whom I had
forbidden to call up his fiancée on the telephone, "by mistake" and "absent-
mindedly" he asked for a wrong number when he wanted to telephone to me, so
that he was suddenly connected with the lady. A pretty example and one of
practical significance in making a direct mistake is the observation of an
engineer at a preliminary hearing in a damage suit:
"Some time ago I worked with several colleagues in the laboratory of a high
school on a series of complicated elasticity experiments, a piece of work which
we had undertaken voluntarily but which began to take more time than we had
expected. One day as I went into the laboratory with my colleague F., the latter
remarked how unpleasant it was to him to lose so much time that day, since he
had so much to do at home. I could not help agreeing with him, and remarked
half jokingly, alluding to an incident of the previous week: 'Let's hope that the
machine gives out again so that we can stop work and go home early.'
"In the division of labor it happened that F. was given the regulation of the
valve of the press, that is to say, he was, by means of a cautious opening of the
valve, to let the liquid pressure from the accumulator flow slowly into the
cylinder of the hydraulic press. The man who was directing the job stood by the
manometer (pressure gauge) and when the right pressure had been reached
called out in a loud voice: 'Stop.' At this command F. seized the valve and
turned with all his might—to the left! (All valves, without exception, close to
the right.) Thereby the whole pressure of the accumulator suddenly became
effective in the press, a strain for which the connecting pipes are not designed,
so that a connecting pipe immediately burst—quite a harmless defect, but one
which nevertheless forced us to drop work for the day and go home.
"It is characteristic, by the way, that some time afterward when we were
discussing this occurrence, my friend F. had no recollection whatever of my
remark, which I could recall with certainty."
From this point you may reach the conjecture that it is not harmless accident
which makes the hands of your domestics such dangerous enemies to your
household property. But you can also raise the question whether it is always an
accident when one damages himself and exposes his own person to danger.
There are interests the value of which you will presently be able to test by
means of the analysis of observations.
Ladies and gentlemen, this is far from being all that might be said about
errors. There is indeed much left to investigate and to discuss. But I am
satisfied if, from our investigations to date, your previous views are somewhat
shaken and if you have acquired a certain degree of liberality in the acceptance
of new ones. For the rest, I must content myself with leaving you face to face
with an unclear condition of affairs. We cannot prove all our axioms by the
study of errors and, indeed, are by no means solely dependent on this material.
The great value of errors for our purpose lies in the fact that they are very
frequent phenomena that can easily be observed on oneself and the occurrence
of which do not require a pathological condition. I should like to mention just
one more of your unanswered questions before concluding: "If, as we have seen
in many examples, people come so close to understanding errors and so often
act as though they penetrated their meaning, how is it possible that they can so
generally consider them accidental, senseless and meaningless, and can so
energetically oppose their psychoanalytic elucidation?"
You are right; that is conspicuous and demands an explanation. I shall not
give this explanation to you, however, but shall guide you slowly to the
connecting links from which the explanation will force itself upon you without
any aid from me.

II

THE DREAM
 FIFTH LECTURE

THE DREAM

Difficulties and Preliminary Approach

ONE day the discovery was made that the disease symptoms of certain
nervous patients have a meaning.[22] Thereupon the psychoanalytic method of
therapy was founded. In this treatment it happened that the patients also
presented dreams in place of their symptoms. Herewith originated the
conjecture that these dreams also have a meaning.
We will not, however, pursue this historical path, but enter upon the opposite
one. We wish to discover the meaning of dreams as preparation for the study of
the neuroses. This inversion is justified, for the study of dreams is not only the
best preparation for that of the neuroses, but the dream itself is also a neurotic
symptom, and in fact one which possesses for us the incalculable advantage of
occurring in all normals. Indeed, if all human beings were well and would
dream, we could gain from their dreams almost all the insight to which the
study of the neuroses has led.
Thus it is that the dream becomes the object of psychoanalytic research—
again an ordinary, little-considered phenomenon, apparently of no practical
value, like the errors with which, indeed, it shares the character of occurring in
normals. But otherwise the conditions are rather less favorable for our work.
Errors had been neglected only by science, which had paid little attention to
them; but at least it was no disgrace to occupy one's self with them. People said
there are indeed more important things, but perhaps something may come of it.
Preoccupation with the dream, however, is not merely impractical and
superfluous, but actually ignominious; it carries the odium of the unscientific,
awakens the suspicion of a personal leaning towards mysticism. The idea of a
physician busying himself with dreams when even in neuropathology and
psychiatry there are matters so much more serious—tumors the size of apples
which incapacitate the organ of the psyche, hemorrhages, and chronic
inflammations in which one can demonstrate changes in the tissues under the
microscope! No, the dream is much too trifling an object, and unworthy of
Science.
And besides, it is a condition which in itself defies all the requirements of
exact research—in dream investigation one is not even sure of one's object. A
delusion, for example, presents itself in clear and definite outlines. "I am the
Emperor of China," says the patient aloud. But the dream? It generally cannot
be related at all. If anyone relates a dream, has he any guarantee that he has told
it correctly, and not changed it during the telling, or invented an addition which
was forced by the indefiniteness of his recollection? Most dreams cannot be
remembered at all, are forgotten except for small fragments. And upon the
interpretation of such material shall a scientific psychology or method of
treatment for patients be based?
A certain excess in judgment may make us suspicious. The objections to the
dream as an object of research obviously go too far. The question of
insignificance we have already had to deal with in discussing errors. We said to
ourselves that important matters may manifest themselves through small signs.
As concerns the indefiniteness of the dream, it is after all a characteristic like
any other. One cannot prescribe the characteristics of an object. Moreover,
there are clear and definite dreams. And there are other objects of psychiatric
research which suffer from the same trait of indefiniteness, e.g., many
compulsion ideas, with which even respectable and esteemed psychiatrists have
occupied themselves. I might recall the last case which occurred in my practice.
The patient introduced himself to me with the words, "I have a certain feeling
as though I had harmed or had wished to harm some living thing—a child?—
no, more probably a dog—perhaps pushed it off a bridge—or something else."
We can overcome to some degree the difficulty of uncertain recollection in the
dream if we determine that exactly what the dreamer tells us is to be taken as
his dream, without regard to anything which he has forgotten or may have
changed in recollection. And finally, one cannot make so general an assertion
as that the dream is an unimportant thing. We know from our own experience
that the mood in which one wakes up after a dream may continue throughout
the whole day. Cases have been observed by physicians in which a psychosis
begins with a dream and holds to a delusion which originated in it. It is related
of historical personages that they drew their inspiration for important deeds
from dreams. So we may ask whence comes the contempt of scientific circles
for the dream?
I think it is the reaction to their over-estimation in former times.
Reconstruction of the past is notoriously difficult, but this much we may
assume with certainty—if you will permit me the jest—that our ancestors of
3000 years ago and more, dreamed much in the way we do. As far as we know,
all ancient peoples attached great importance to dreams and considered them of
practical value. They drew omens for the future from dreams, sought
premonitions in them. In those days, to the Greeks and all Orientals, a
campaign without dream interpreters must have been as impossible as a
campaign without an aviation scout to-day. When Alexander the Great
undertook his campaign of conquests, the most famous dream interpreters were
in attendance. The city of Tyrus, which was then still situated on an island, put
up so fierce a resistance that Alexander considered the idea of raising the siege.
Then he dreamed one night of a satyr dancing as if in triumph; and when he
laid his dream before his interpreters he received the information that the
victory over the city had been announced to him. He ordered the attack and
took Tyrus. Among the Etruscans and the Romans other methods of
discovering the future were in use, but the interpretation of dreams was
practical and esteemed during the entire Hellenic-Roman period. Of the
literature dealing with the topic at least the chief work has been preserved to us,
namely, the book of Artemidoros of Daldis, who is supposed to have lived
during the lifetime of the Emperor Hadrian. How it happened subsequently that
the art of dream interpretation was lost and the dream fell into discredit, I
cannot tell you. Enlightenment cannot have had much part in it, for the Dark
Ages faithfully preserved things far more absurd than the ancient dream
interpretation. The fact is, the interest in dreams gradually deteriorated into
superstition, and could assert itself only among the ignorant. The latest misuse
of dream interpretation in our day still tries to discover in dreams the numbers
which are going to be drawn in the small lottery. On the other hand, the exact
science of to-day has repeatedly dealt with dreams, but always only with the
purpose of applying its physiological theories to the dream. By physicians, of
course, the dream was considered as a non-psychic act, as the manifestation of
somatic irritations in the psychic life. Binz (1876) pronounced the dream "a
bodily process, in all cases useless, in many actually pathological, above which
the world-soul and immortality are raised as high as the blue ether over the
weed-grown sands of the lowest plain." Maury compared it with the irregular
twitchings of St. Vitus' Dance in contrast to the co-ordinated movements of the
normal person. An old comparison makes the content of the dream analogous
to the tones which the "ten fingers of a musically illiterate person would bring
forth if they ran over the keys of the instrument."
Interpretation means finding a hidden meaning. There can be no question of
interpretation in such an estimation of the dream process. Look up the
description of the dream in Wundt, Jodl and other newer philosophers. You will
find an enumeration of the deviations of dream life from waking thought, in a
sense disparaging to the dream. The description points out the disintegration of
association, the suspension of the critical faculty, the elimination of all
knowledge, and other signs of diminished activity. The only valuable
contribution to the knowledge of the dream which we owe to exact science
pertains to the influence of bodily stimuli, operative during sleep, on the
content of the dream. There are two thick volumes of experimental researches
on dreams by the recently deceased Norwegian author, J. Mourly Vold,
(translated into German in 1910 and 1912), which deal almost solely with the
consequences of changes in the position of the limbs. They are recommended
as the prototype of exact dream research. Now can you imagine what exact
science would say if it discovered that we wish to attempt to find the meaning
of dreams? It may be it has already said it, but we will not allow ourselves to be
frightened off. If errors can have a meaning, the dream can, too, and errors in
many cases have a meaning which has escaped exact science. Let us confess to
sharing the prejudice of the ancients and the common people, and let us follow
in the footsteps of the ancient dream interpreters.
First of all, we must orient ourselves in our task, and take a bird's eye view of
our field. What is a dream? It is difficult to say in one sentence. But we do not
want to attempt any definition where a reference to the material with which
everyone is familiar suffices. Yet we ought to select the essential element of the
dream. How can that be found? There are such monstrous differences within
the boundary which encloses our province, differences in every direction. The
essential thing will very probably be that which we can show to be common to
all dreams.
Well, the first thing which is common to all dreams is that we are asleep
during their occurrence. The dream is apparently the psychic life during sleep,
which has certain resemblances to that of the waking condition, and on the
other hand is distinguished from it by important differences. That was noted
even in Aristotle's definition. Perhaps there are other connections obtaining
between the dream and sleep. One can be awakened by a dream, one frequently
has a dream when he wakes spontaneously or is forcibly awakened from sleep.
The dream then seems to be an intermediate condition between sleeping and
waking. Thus we are referred to the problem of sleep. What, then, is sleep?
That is a physiological or biological problem concerning which there is still
much controversy. We can form no decision on the point, but I think we may
attempt a psychological characterization of sleep. Sleep is a condition in which
I wish to have nothing to do with the external world, and have withdrawn my
interest from it. I put myself to sleep by withdrawing myself from the external
world and by holding off its stimuli. I also go to sleep when I am fatigued by
the external world. Thus, by going to sleep, I say to the external world, "Leave
me in peace, for I wish to sleep." Conversely, the child says, "I won't go to bed
yet, I am not tired, I want to have some more fun." The biological intention of
sleep thus seems to be recuperation; its psychological character, the suspension
of interest in the external world. Our relation to the world into which we came
so unwillingly, seems to include the fact that we cannot endure it without
interruption. For this reason we revert from time to time to the pre-natal
existence, that is, to the intra-uterine existence. At least we create for ourselves
conditions quite similar to those obtaining at that time—warmth, darkness and
the absence of stimuli. Some of us even roll ourselves into tight packages and
assume in sleep a posture very similar to the intra-uterine posture. It seems as if
the world did not wholly possess us adults, it has only two-thirds of our life, we
are still one-third unborn. Each awakening in the morning is then like a new
birth. We also speak of the condition after sleep with the words, "I feel as
though I had been born anew," by which we probably form a very erroneous
idea of the general feeling of the newly born. It may be assumed that the latter,
on the contrary, feel very uncomfortable. We also speak of birth as "seeing the
light of day." If that be sleep, then the dream is not on its program at all, rather
it seems an unwelcome addition. We think, too, that dreamless sleep is the best
and only normal sleep. There should be no psychic activity in sleep; if the
psyche stirs, then just to that extent have we failed to reduplicate the foetal
condition; remainders of psychic activity could not be completely avoided.
These remainders are the dream. Then it really does seem that the dream need
have no meaning. It was different in the case of errors; they were activities of
the waking state. But when I am asleep, have quite suspended psychic activity
and have suppressed all but certain of its remainders, then it is by no means
inevitable that these remainders have a meaning. In fact, I cannot make use of
this meaning, in view of the fact that the rest of my psyche is asleep. This must,
of course, be a question only of twitching, like spasmodic reactions, a question
only of psychic phenomena such as follow directly upon somatic stimulation.
The dream, therefore, appears to be the sleep-disturbing remnant of the psychic
activity of waking life, and we may make the resolution promptly to abandon a
theme which is so ill-adapted to psychoanalysis.
However, even if the dream is superfluous, it exists nevertheless and we may
try to give an account of its existence. Why does not the psyche go to sleep?
Probably because there is something which gives it no rest. Stimuli act upon the
psyche, and it must react to them. The dream, therefore, is the way in which the
psyche reacts to the stimuli acting upon it in the sleeping condition. We note
here a point of approach to the understanding of the dream. We can now search
through different dreams to discover what are the stimuli which seek to disturb
the sleep and which are reacted to with dreams. Thus far we might be said to
have discovered the first common element.
Are there other common elements? Yes, it is undeniable that there are, but
they are much more difficult to grasp and describe. The psychic processes of
sleep, for example, have a very different character from those of waking. One
experiences many things in the dream, and believes in them, while one really
has experienced nothing but perhaps the one disturbing stimulus. One
experiences them predominantly in visual images; feelings may also be
interspersed in the dream as well as thoughts; the other senses may also have
experiences, but after all the dream experiences are predominantly pictures. A
part of the difficulty of dream telling comes from the fact that we have to
transpose these pictures into words. "I could draw it," the dreamer says
frequently, "but I don't know how to say it." That is not really a case of
diminished psychic activity, like that of the feeble-minded in comparison with
the highly gifted; it is something qualitatively different, but it is difficult to say
wherein the difference lies. G. T. Fechner once hazarded the conjecture that the
scene in which dreams are played is a different one from that of the waking
perceptual life. To be sure, we do not understand this, do not know what we are
to think of it, but the impression of strangeness which most dreams make upon
us does really bear this out. The comparison of the dream activity with the
effects of a hand untrained in music also fails at this point. The piano, at least,
will surely answer with the same tones, even if not with melodies, as soon as by
accident one brushes its keys. Let us keep this second common element of all
dreams carefully in mind, even though it be not understood.
Are there still further traits in common? I find none, and see only differences
everywhere, differences indeed in the apparent length as well as the
definiteness of the activities, participation of effects, durability, etc. All this
really is not what we might expect of a compulsion-driven, irresistible,
convulsive defense against a stimulus. As concerns the dimensions of dreams,
there are very short ones which contain only one picture or a few, one thought
—yes, even one word only—, others which are uncommonly rich in content,
seem to dramatize whole novels and to last very long. There are dreams which
are as plain as an experience itself, so plain that we do not recognize them as
dreams for a long time after waking; others which are indescribably weak,
shadowy and vague; indeed in one and the same dream, the overemphasized
and the scarcely comprehensible, indefinite parts may alternate with each other.
Dreams may be quite meaningful or at least coherent, yes, even witty,
fantastically beautiful. Others, again, are confused, as if feeble-minded, absurd,
often actually mad. There are dreams which leave us quite cold, others in which
all the effects come to expression—pain deep enough for tears, fear strong
enough to waken us, astonishment, delight, etc. Dreams are generally quickly
forgotten upon waking, or they may hold over a day to such an extent as to be
faintly and incompletely remembered in the evening. Others, for example, the
dreams of childhood, are so well preserved that they stay in the memory thirty
years later, like fresh experiences. Dreams, like individuals, may appear a
single time, and never again, or they may repeat themselves unchanged in the
same person, or with small variations. In short, this nightly psychic activity can
avail itself of an enormous repertoire, can indeed compass everything which the
psychic accomplishes by day, but yet the two are not the same.
One might try to give an account of this many-sidedness of the dream by
assuming that it corresponds to different intermediate stages between sleeping
and waking, different degrees of incomplete sleep. Yes, but in that case as the
psyche nears the waking state, the conviction that it is a dream ought to
increase along with the value, content and distinctiveness of the dream product,
and it would not happen that immediately beside a distinct and sensible dream
fragment a senseless and indistinct one would occur, to be followed again by a
goodly piece of work. Surely the psyche could not change its degree of
somnolence so quickly. This explanation thus avails us nothing; at any rate, it
cannot be accepted offhand.
Let us, for the present, give up the idea of finding the meaning of the dream
and try instead to clear a path to a better understanding of the dream by means
of the elements common to all dreams. From the relation of dreams to the
sleeping condition, we concluded that the dream is the reaction to a sleep-
disturbing stimulus. As we have heard, this is the only point upon which exact
experimental psychology can come to our assistance; it gives us the
information that stimuli applied during sleep appear in the dream. There have
been many such investigations carried out, including that of the above
mentioned Mourly Vold. Indeed, each of us must at some time have been in a
position to confirm this conclusion by means of occasional personal
observations. I shall choose certain older experiments for presentation. Maury
had such experiments made on his own person. He was allowed to smell
cologne while dreaming. He dreamed that he was in Cairo in the shop of
Johann Marina Farina, and therewith were linked further extravagant
adventures. Or, he was slightly pinched in the nape of the neck; he dreamed of
having a mustard plaster applied, and of a doctor who had treated him in
childhood. Or, a drop of water was poured on his forehead. He was then in
Italy, perspired profusely, and drank the white wine of Orvieto.
What strikes us about these experimentally induced dreams we may perhaps
be able to comprehend still more clearly in another series of stimulated dreams.
Three dreams have been recounted by a witty observer, Hildebrand, all of them
reactions to the sound of the alarm clock:
"I go walking one spring morning and saunter through the green fields to a
neighboring village. There I see the inhabitants in gala attire, their hymn books
under their arms, going church-ward in great numbers. To be sure, this is
Sunday, and the early morning service will soon begin. I decide to attend, but
since I am somewhat overheated, decide to cool off in the cemetery
surrounding the church. While I am there reading several inscriptions, I hear
the bell ringer ascend the tower, and now see the little village church bell which
is to give the signal for the beginning of the service. The bell hangs a good bit
longer, then it begins to swing, and suddenly its strokes sound clear and
penetrating, so clear and penetrating that they make an end of—my sleep. The
bell-strokes, however, come from my alarm clock.
"A second combination. It is a clear winter day. The streets are piled high
with snow. I agree to go on a sleighing party, but must wait a long time before
the announcement comes that the sleigh is at the door. Then follow the
preparations for getting in—the fur coat is put on, the footwarmer dragged forth
—and finally I am seated in my place. But the departure is still delayed until
the reins give the waiting horses the tangible signal. Now they pull; the
vigorously shaken bells begin their familiar Janizary music so powerfully that
instantly the spider web of the dream is torn. Again it is nothing but the shrill
tone of the alarm clock.
"And still a third example. I see a kitchen maid walking along the corridor to
the dining room with some dozens of plates piled high. The pillar of porcelain
in her arms seems to me in danger of losing its balance. 'Take care!' I warn her.
'The whole load will fall to the ground.' Naturally, the inevitable retort follows:
one is used to that, etc., and I still continue to follow the passing figure with
apprehensive glances. Sure enough, at the threshold she stumbles—the brittle
dishes fall and rattle and crash over the floor in a thousand pieces. But—the
endless racket is not, as I soon notice, a real rattling, but really a ringing and
with this ringing, as the awakened subject now realizes, the alarm has
performed its duty."
These dreams are very pretty, quite meaningful, not at all incoherent, as
dreams usually are. We will not object to them on that score. That which is
common to them all is that the situation terminates each time in a noise, which
one recognizes upon waking up as the sound of the alarm. Thus we see here
how a dream originates, but also discover something else. The dream does not
recognize the alarm—indeed the alarm does not appear in the dream—the
dream replaces the alarm sound with another, it interprets the stimulus which
interrupts the sleep, but interprets it each time in a different way. Why? There
is no answer to this question, it seems to be something arbitrary. But to
understand the dream means to be able to say why it has chosen just this sound
and no other for the interpretation of the alarm-clock stimulus. In quite
analogous fashion, we must raise the objection to the Maury experiment that
we see well enough that the stimulus appears in the dream, but that we do not
discover why it appears in just this form; and that the form taken by the dream
does not seem to follow from the nature of the sleep-disturbing stimulus.
Moreover, in the Maury experiments a mass of other dream material links itself
to the direct stimulus product; as, for example, the extravagant adventures in
the cologne dream, for which one can give no account.
Now I shall ask you to consider the fact that the waking dreams offer by far
the best chances for determining the influence of external sleep-disturbing
stimuli. In most of the other cases it will be more difficult. One does not wake
up in all dreams, and in the morning, when one remembers the dream of the
night, how can one discover the disturbing stimulus which was perhaps in
operation at night? I did succeed once in subsequently establishing such a
sound stimulus, though naturally only in consequence of special circumstances.
I woke up one morning in a place in the Tyrolese Mountains, with the certainty
that I had dreamt the Pope had died. I could not explain the dream, but then my
wife asked me: "Did you hear the terrible bell ringing that broke out early this
morning from all the churches and chapels?" No, I had heard nothing, my sleep
is a sound one, but thanks to this information I understood my dream. How
often may such stimuli incite the sleeper to dream without his knowing of them
afterward? Perhaps often, perhaps infrequently; when the stimulus can no
longer be traced, one cannot be convinced of its existence. Even without this
fact we have given up evaluating the sleep disturbing stimuli, since we know
that they can explain only a little bit of the dream, and not the whole dream
reaction.
But we need not give up this whole theory for that reason. In fact, it can be
extended. It is clearly immaterial through what cause the sleep was disturbed
and the psyche incited to dream. If the sensory stimulus is not always externally
induced, it may be instead a stimulus proceeding from the internal organs, a so-
called somatic stimulus. This conjecture is obvious, and it corresponds to the
most popular conception of the origin of dreams. Dreams come from the
stomach, one often hears it said. Unfortunately it may be assumed here again
that the cases are frequent in which the somatic stimulus which operated during
the night can no longer be traced after waking, and has thus become
unverifiable. But let us not overlook the fact that many recognized experiences
testify to the derivation of dreams from the somatic stimulus. It is in general
indubitable that the condition of the internal organs can influence the dream.
The relation of many a dream content to a distention of the bladder or to an
excited condition of the genital organs, is so clear that it cannot be mistaken.
From these transparent cases one can proceed to others in which, from the
content of the dream, at least a justifiable conjecture may be made that such
somatic stimuli have been operative, inasmuch as there is something in this
content which may be conceived as elaboration, representation,interpretation of
the stimuli. The dream investigator Schirmer (1861) insisted with particular
emphasis on the derivation of the dream from organic stimuli, and cited several
splendid examples in proof. For example, in a dream he sees "two rows of
beautiful boys with blonde hair and delicate complexions stand opposite each
other in preparation for a fight, fall upon each other, seize each other, take up
the old position again, and repeat the whole performance;" here the
interpretation of these rows of boys as teeth is plausible in itself, and it seems to
become convincing when after this scene the dreamer "pulls a long tooth out of
his jaws." The interpretation of "long, narrow, winding corridors" as intestinal
stimuli, seems sound and confirms Schirmer's assertion that the dream above
all seeks to represent the stimulus-producing organ by means of objects
resembling it.
 Thus we must be prepared to admit that the internal stimuli may play the
same role in the dream as the external. Unfortunately, their evaluation is subject
to the same difficulties as those we have already encountered. In a large
number of cases the interpretation of the stimuli as somatic remains uncertain
and undemonstrable. Not all dreams, but only a certain portion of them, arouse
the suspicion that an internal organic stimulus was concerned in their causation.
And finally, the internal stimuli will be as little able as the external sensory
stimuli to explain any more of the dream than pertains to the direct reaction to
the stimuli. The origin, therefore, of the rest of the dream remains obscure.
Let us, however, notice a peculiarity of dream life which becomes apparent
in the study of these effects of stimuli. The dream does not simply reproduce
the stimulus, but it elaborates it, it plays upon it, places it in a sequence of
relationships, replaces it with something else. That is a side of dream activity
which must interest us because it may lead us closer to the nature of the dream.
If one does something under stimulation, then this stimulation need not exhaust
the act. Shakespeare's Macbeth, for example, is a drama created on the occasion
of the coronation of the King who for the first time wore upon his head the
crown symbolizing the union of three countries. But does this historical
occasion cover the content of the drama, does it explain its greatness and its
riddle? Perhaps the external and internal stimuli, acting upon the sleeper, are
only the incitors of the dream, of whose nature nothing is betrayed to us from
our knowledge of that fact.
The other element common to dreams, their psychic peculiarity, is on the one
hand hard to comprehend, and on the other hand offers no point for further
investigation. In dreams we perceive a thing for the most part in visual forms.
Can the stimuli furnish a solution for this fact? Is it actually the stimulus which
we experience? Why, then, is the experience visual when optic stimulation
incited the dream only in the rarest cases? Or can it be proved, when we dream
speeches, that during sleep a conversation or sounds resembling it reached our
ear? This possibility I venture decisively to reject.
If, from the common elements of dreams, we get no further, then let us see
what we can do with their differences. Dreams are often senseless, blurred,
absurd; but there are some that are meaningful, sober, sensible. Let us see if the
latter, the sensible dreams, can give some information concerning the senseless
ones. I will give you the most recent sensible dream which was told me, the
dream of a young man: "I was promenading in Kärtner Street, met Mr. X. there,
whom I accompanied for a bit, and then I went to a restaurant. Two ladies and a
gentleman seated themselves at my table. I was annoyed at this at first, and
would not look at them. Then I did look, and found that they were quite pretty."
The dreamer adds that the evening before the dream he had really been in
Kärtner Street, which is his usual route, and that he had met Mr. X. there. The
other portion of the dream is no direct reminiscence, but bears a certain
resemblance to a previous experience. Or another meaningful dream, that of a
lady. "Her husband asks, 'Doesn't the piano need tuning?' She: 'It is not worth
while; it has to be newly lined.'" This dream reproduces without much
alteration a conversation which took place the day before between herself and
her husband. What can we learn from these two sober dreams? Nothing but that
you find them to be reproductions of daily life or ideas connected therewith.
This would at least be something if it could be stated of all dreams. There is no
question, however, that this applies to only a minority of dreams. In most
dreams there is no sign of any connection with the previous day, and no light is
thereby cast on the senseless and absurd dream. We know only that we have
struck a new problem. We wish to know not only what it is that the dream says,
but when, as in our examples, the dream speaks plainly, we also wish to know
why and wherefore this recent experience is repeated in the dream.
I believe you are as tired as I am of continuing attempts like these. We see,
after all, that the greatest interest in a problem is inadequate if one does not
know a path which will lead to a solution. Up to this point we have not found
this path. Experimental psychology gave us nothing but a few very valuable
pieces of information concerning the meaning of stimuli as dream incitors. We
need expect nothing from philosophy except that lately it has taken haughtily to
pointing out to us the intellectual inferiority of our object. Let us not apply to
the occult sciences for help. History and popular tradition tell us that the dream
is meaningful and significant; it sees into the future. Yet that is hard to accept
and surely not demonstrable. Thus our first efforts end in entire helplessness.
Unexpectedly we get a hint from a quarter toward which we have not yet
looked. Colloquial usage—which after all is not an accidental thing but the
remnant of ancient knowledge, though it should not be made use of without
caution—our speech, that is to say, recognizes something which curiously
enough it calls "day dreaming." Day dreams are phantasies. They are very
common phenomena, again observable in the normal as well as in the sick, and
access to their study is open to everyone in his own person. The most
conspicuous feature about these phantastic productions is that they have
received the name "day dreams," for they share neither of the two common
elements of dreams. Their name contradicts the relation to the sleeping
condition, and as regards the second common element, one does not experience
or hallucinate anything, one only imagines it. One knows that it is a phantasy,
that one is not seeing but thinking the thing. These day dreams appear in the
period before puberty, often as early as the last years of childhood, continue
into the years of maturity, are then either given up or retained through life. The
content of these phantasies is dominated by very transparent motives. They are
scenes and events in which the egoistic, ambitious and power-seeking desires
of the individual find satisfaction. With young men the ambitionphantasies
generally prevail; in women, the erotic, since they have banked their ambition
on success in love. But often enough the erotic desire appears in the
background with men too; all the heroic deeds and incidents are after all meant
only to win the admiration and favor of women. Otherwise these day dreams
are very manifold and undergo changing fates. They are either, each in turn,
abandoned after a short time and replaced by a new one, or they are retained,
spun out into long stories, and adapted to changes in daily circumstances. They
move with the time, so to speak, and receive from it a "time mark" which
testifies to the influence of the new situation. They are the raw material of
poetic production, for out of his day dreams the poet, with certain
transformations, disguises and omissions, makes the situations which he puts
into his novels, romances and dramas. The hero of the day dreams, however, is
always the individual himself, either directly or by means of a transparent
identification with another.
Perhaps day dreams bear this name because of the similarity of their relation
to reality, in order to indicate that their content is as little to be taken for real as
that of dreams. Perhaps, however, this identity of names does nevertheless rest
on a characteristic of the dream which is still unknown to us, perhaps even one
of those characteristics which we are seeking. It is possible, on the other hand,
that we are wrong in trying to read a meaning into this similarity of
designation. Yet that can only be cleared up later.

SIXTH LECTURE

THE DREAM

Hypothesis and Technique of Interpretation

WE must find a new path, a new method, in order to proceed with the
investigation of the dream. I shall now make an obvious suggestion. Let us
assume as a hypothesis for everything which follows, that the dream is not a
somatic but a psychic phenomenon. You appreciate the significance of that
statement, but what justification have we for making it? None; but that alone
need not deter us from making it. The matter stands thus: If the dream is a
somatic phenomenon, it does not concern us. It can be of interest to us only on
the supposition that it is a psychic phenomenon. Let us therefore work upon
that assumption in order to see what comes of it. The result of our labor will
determine whether we are to hold to this assumption and whether we may, in
fact, consider it in turn a result. What is it that we really wish to achieve, to
what end are we working? It is what one usually seeks to attain in the sciences,
an understanding of phenomena, the creation of relationships between them,
and ultimately, if possible, the extension of our control over them.
Let us then proceed with the work on the assumption that the dream is a
psychic phenomenon. This makes it an achievement and expression of the
dreamer, but one that tells us nothing, one that we do not understand. What do
you do when I make a statement you do not understand? You ask for an
explanation, do you not? Why may we not do the same thing here, ask the
dreamer to give us the meaning of his dream?
If you will remember, we were in this same situation once before. It was
when we were investigating errors, a case of a slip of the tongue. Someone
said: "Da sind dinge zum vorschwein gekommen," whereupon we asked—no,
luckily, not we, but others, persons in no way associated with psychoanalysis—
these persons asked him what he meant by this unintelligible talk. He
immediately answered that he had intended to say "Das waren schweinereien,"
but that he had suppressed this intention, in favor of the other, more gentle "Da
sind dinge zum vorschein gekommen."[23] I explained to you at the time that
this inquiry was typical of every psychoanalytical investigation, and now you
understand that psychoanalysis follows the technique, as far as possible, of
having the subjects themselves discover the solutions of their riddles. The
dreamer himself, then, is to tell us the meaning of his dream.
It is common knowledge, however, that this is not such an easy matter with
dreams. In the case of slips, our method worked in a number of cases, but we
encountered some where the subject did not wish to say anything—in fact,
indignantly rejected the answer that we suggested. Instances of the first method
are entirely lacking in the case of dreams; the dreamer always says he knows
nothing. He cannot deny our interpretation, for we have none. Shall we then
give up the attempt? Since he knows nothing and we know nothing and a third
person surely knows nothing, it looks as though there were no possibility of
discovering anything. If you wish, discontinue the investigation. But if you are
of another mind, you can accompany me on the way. For I assure you, it is very
possible, in fact, probable, that the dreamer does know what his dream means,
but does not know that he knows, and therefore believes he does not know.
You will point out to me that I am again making an assumption, the second
in this short discourse, and that I am greatly reducing the credibility of my
claim. On the assumption that the dream is a psychic phenomenon, on the
further assumption that there are unconscious things in man which he knows
without knowing that he knows, etc.—we need only realize clearly the intrinsic
improbability of each of these two assumptions, and we shall calmly turn our
attention from the conclusions to be derived from such premises.
 Yet, ladies and gentlemen, I have not invited you here to delude you or to
conceal anything from you. I did, indeed, announce a General Introduction to
Psychoanalysis, but I did not intend the title to convey that I was an oracle,
who would show you a finished product with all the difficulties carefully
concealed, all the gaps filled in and all the doubts glossed over, so that you
might peacefully believe you had learned something new. No, precisely
because you are beginners, I wanted to show you our science as it is, with all its
hills and pitfalls, demands and considerations. For I know that it is the same in
all sciences, and must be so in their beginnings particularly. I know, too, that
teaching as a rule endeavors to hide these difficulties and these incompletely
developed phases from the student. But that will not do in psychoanalysis. I
have, as a matter of fact, made two assumptions, one within the other, and he
who finds the whole too troublesome and too uncertain or is accustomed to
greater security or more elegant derivations, need go no further with us. What I
mean is, he should leave psychological problems entirely alone, for it must be
apprehended that he will not find the sure and safe way he is prepared to go,
traversable. Then, too, it is superfluous for a science that has something to offer
to plead for auditors and adherents. Its results must create its atmosphere, and it
must then bide its time until these have attracted attention to themselves.
I would warn those of you, however, who care to continue, that my two
assumptions are not of equal worth. The first, that the dream is a psychic
phenomenon, is the assumption we wish to prove by the results of our work.
The other has already been proved in another field, and I take the liberty only
of transferring it from that field to our problem.
Where, in what field of observation shall we seek the proof that there is in
man a knowledge of which he is not conscious, as we here wish to assume in
the case of the dreamer? That would be a remarkable, a surprising fact, one
which would change our understanding of the psychic life, and which would
have no need to hide itself. To name it would be to destroy it, and yet it
pretends to be something real, a contradiction in terms. Nor does it hide itself.
It is no result of the fact itself that we are ignorant of its existence and have not
troubled sufficiently about it. That is just as little our fault as the fact that all
these psychological problems are condemned by persons who have kept away
from all observations and experiments which are decisive in this respect.
The proof appeared in the field of hypnotic phenomena. When, in the year
1889, I was a witness to the extraordinarily enlightening demonstrations of
Siebault and Bernheim in Nancy, I witnessed also the following experiment: If
one placed a man in the somnambulistic state, allowed him to have all manner
of hallucinatory experience, and then woke him up, it appeared in the first
instance that he knew nothing about what had happened during his hypnotic
sleep. Bernheim then directly invited him to relate what had happened to him
during the hypnosis. He maintained he was unable to recall anything. But
Bernheim insisted, he persisted, he assured him he did know, that he must
recall, and, incredible though it may seem, the man wavered, began to rack his
memory, recalled in a shadowy way first one of the suggested experiences, then
another; the recollection became more and more complete and finally was
brought forth without a gap. The fact that he had this knowledge finally, and
that he had had no experiences from any other source in the meantime, permits
the conclusion that he knew of these recollections in the beginning. They were
merely inaccessible, he did not know that he knew them; he believed he did not
know them. This is exactly what we suspect in the dreamer.
I trust you are taken by surprise by the establishment of this fact, and that
you will ask me why I did not refer to this proof before in the case of the slips,
where we credited the man who made a mistake in speech with intentions he
knew nothing about and which he denied. "If a person believes he knows
nothing concerning experiences, the memory of which, however, he retains,"
you might say, "it is no longer so improbable that there are also other psychic
experiences within him of whose existence he is ignorant. This argument would
have impressed us and advanced us in the understanding of errors." To be sure,
I might then have referred to this but I reserved it for another place, where it
was more necessary. Errors have in a measure explained themselves, have, in
part, furnished us with the warning that we must assume the existence of
psychic processes of which we know nothing, for the sake of the connection of
the phenomena. In dreams we are compelled to look to other sources for
explanations; and besides, I count on the fact that you will permit the inference
I draw from hypnotism more readily in this instance. The condition in which
we make mistakes most seem to you to be the normal one. It has no similarity
to the hypnotic. On the other hand, there is a clear relationship between the
hypnotic state and sleep, which is the essential condition of dreams. Hypnotism
is known as artificial sleep; we say to the person whom we hypnotize, "Sleep,"
and the suggestions which we throw out are comparable to the dreams of
natural sleep. The psychical conditions are in both cases really analogous. In
natural sleep we withdraw our attention from the entire outside world; in the
hypnotic, on the other hand, from the whole world with the exception of the
one person who has hypnotized us, with whom we remain in touch.
Furthermore, the so-called nurse's sleep in which the nurse remains in touch
with the child, and can be waked only by him, is a normal counterpart of
hypnotism. The transference of one of the conditions of hypnotism to natural
sleep does not appear to be such a daring proceeding. The inferential
assumption that there is also present in the case of the dreamer a knowledge of
his dream, a knowledge which is so inaccessible that he does not believe it
himself, does not seem to be made out of whole cloth. Let us note that at this
point there appears a third approach to the study of the dream; from the sleep-
disturbing stimuli, from the day-dreams, and now in addition, from the
suggested dreams of the hypnotic state.
Now we return, perhaps with increased faith, to our problem. Apparently it is
very probable that the dreamer knows of his dream; the question is, how to
make it possible for him to discover this knowledge, and to impart it to us? We
do not demand that he give us the meaning of his dream at once, but he will be
able to discover its origin, the thought and sphere of interest from which it
springs. In the case of the errors, you will remember, the man was asked how
he happened to use the wrong word, "vorschwein," and his next idea gave us
the explanation. Our dream technique is very simple, an imitation of this
example. We again ask how the subject happened to have the dream, and his
next statement is again to be taken as an explanation. We disregard the
distinction whether the dreamer believes or does not believe he knows, and
treat both cases in the same way.
This technique is very simple indeed, but I am afraid it will arouse your
sharpest opposition. You will say, "a new assumption. The third! And the most
improbable of all! If I ask the dreamer what he considers the explanation of his
dream to be, his very next association is to be the desired explanation? But it
may be he thinks of nothing at all, or his next thought may be anything at all.
We cannot understand upon what we can base such anticipation. This, really, is
putting too much faith in a situation where a slightly more critical attitude
would be more suitable. Furthermore, a dream is not an isolated error, but
consists of many elements. To which idea should we pin our faith?"
You are right in all the non-essentials. A dream must indeed be distinguished
from a word slip, even in the number of its elements. The technique is
compelled to consider this very carefully. Let me suggest that we separate the
dream into its elements, and carry on the investigation of each element
separately; then the analogy to the word-slip is again set up. You are also
correct when you say that in answer to the separate dream elements no
association may occur to the dreamer. There are cases in which we accept this
answer, and later you will hear what those cases are. They are, oddly enough,
cases in which we ourselves may have certain associations. But in general we
shall contradict the dreamer when he maintains he has no associations. We
shall insist that he must have some association and—we shall be justified. He
will bring forth some association, any one, it makes no difference to us. He will
be especially facile with certain information which might be designated as
historical. He will say, "that is something that happened yesterday" (as in the
two "prosaic" dreams with which we are acquainted); or, "that reminds me of
something that happened recently," and in this manner we shall notice that the
act of associating the dreams with recent impressions is much more frequent
than we had at first supposed. Finally, the dreamer will remember occurrences
more remote from the dream, and ultimately even events in the far past.
But in the essential matters you are mistaken. If you believe that we assume
arbitrarily that the dreamer's next association will disclose just what we are
seeking, or must lead to it, that on the contrary the association is just as likely
to be entirely inconsequential, and without any connection with what we are
seeking, and that it is an example of my unbounded optimism to expect
anything else, then you are greatly mistaken. I have already taken the liberty of
pointing out that in each one of you there is a deep-rooted belief in psychic
freedom and volition, a belief which is absolutely unscientific, and which must
capitulate before the claims of a determinism that controls even the psychic
life. I beg of you to accept it as a fact that only this one association will occur
to the person questioned. But I do not put one belief in opposition to another. It
can be proved that the association, which the subject produces, is not voluntary,
is not indeterminable, not unconnected with what we seek. Indeed, I discovered
long ago—without, however, laying too much stress on the discovery—that
even experimental psychology has brought forth this evidence.
I ask you to give your particular attention to the significance of this subject.
If I invite a person to tell me what occurs to him in relation to some certain
element of his dream I am asking him to abandon himself to free
association, controlled by a given premise. This demands a special delimitation
of the attention, quite different from cogitation, in fact, exclusive of cogitation.
Many persons put themselves into such a state easily; others show an
extraordinarily high degree of clumsiness. There is a higher level of free
association again, where I omit this original premise and designate only the
manner of the association, e.g., rule that the subject freely give a proper name
or a number. Such an association would be more voluntary, more
indeterminable, than the one called forth by our technique. But it can be shown
that it is strongly determined each time by an important inner mental set which,
at the moment at which it is active, is unknown to us, just as unknown as the
disturbing tendencies in the case of errors and the provocative tendencies in the
case of accidental occurrences.
I, and many others after me, have again and again instigated such
investigations for names and numbers which occur to the subject without any
restraint, and have published some results. The method is the following:
Proceeding from the disclosed names, we awaken continuous associations
which then are no longer entirely free, but rather are limited as are the
associations to the dream elements, and this is true until the impulse is
exhausted. By that time, however, the motivation and significance of the free
name associations is explained. The investigations always yield the same
results, the information often covers a wealth of material and necessitates
lengthy elaboration. The associations to freely appearing numbers are perhaps
the most significant. They follow one another so quickly and approach a hidden
goal with such inconceivable certainty, that it is really startling. I want to give
you an example of such a name analysis, one that, happily, involves very little
material.
In the course of my treatment of a young man, I referred to this subject and
mentioned the fact that despite the apparent volition it is impossible to have a
name occur which does not appear to be limited by the immediate conditions,
the peculiarities of the subject, and the momentary situation. He was doubtful,
and I proposed that he make such an attempt immediately. I know he has
especially numerous relations of every sort with women and girls, and so am of
the opinion that he will have an unusually wide choice if he happens to think of
a woman's name. He agrees. To my astonishment, and perhaps even more to
his, no avalanche of women's names descends upon my head, but he is silent
for a time, and then admits that a single name has occurred to him—and no
other: Albino. How extraordinary, but what associations have you with this
name? How many albinoes do you know? Strangely enough, he knew no
albinoes, and there were no further associations with the name. One might
conclude the analysis had proved a failure; but no—it was already complete; no
further association was necessary. The man himself had unusually light
coloring. In our talks during the cure I had frequently called him an albino in
fun. We were at the time occupied in determining the feminine characteristics
of his nature. He himself was the Albino, who at that moment was to him the
most interesting feminine person.
In like manner, melodies, which come for no reason, show themselves
conditioned by and associated with a train of thought which has a right to
occupy one, yet of whose activity one is unconscious. It is easily demonstrable
that the attraction to the melody is associated with the text, or its origin. But I
must take the precaution not to include in this assertion really musical people,
with whom, as it happens, I have had no experience. In their cases the musical
meaning of the melody may have occasioned its occurrence. More often the
first reason holds. I know of a young man who for a time was actually haunted
by the really charming melody of the song of Paris, from The Beautiful Helen,
until the analysis brought to his attention the fact that at that time his interest
was divided between an Ida and a Helen.
If then the entirely unrestrained associations are conditioned in such a
manner and are arranged in a distinct order, we are justified in concluding that
associations with a single condition, that of an original premise, or starting
point, may be conditioned to no less degree. The investigation does in fact
show that aside from the conditioning which we have established by the
premise, a second farther dependence is recognizable upon powerful affective
thoughts, upon cycles of interest and complexes of whose influence we are
ignorant, therefore unconscious at the time.
Associations of this character have been the subject matter of very
enlightening experimental investigations, which have played a noteworthy role
in the history of psychoanalysis. The Wundt school proposed the so-called
association-experiment, wherein the subject is given the task of answering in
the quickest possible time, with any desired reaction, to a given stimulus-word.
It is then possible to study the interval of time that elapses between the stimulus
and the reaction, the nature of the answer given as reaction, the possible
mistake in a subsequent repetition of the same attempt, and similar matters. The
Zurich School under the leadership of Bleuler and Jung, gave the explanation
of the reactions following the association-experiment, by asking the subject to
explain a given reaction by means of further associations, in the cases where
there was anything extraordinary in the reaction. It then became apparent that
these extraordinary reactions were most sharply determined by the complexes
of the subject. In this matter Bleuler and Jung built the first bridge from
experimental psychology to psychoanalysis.
Thus instructed, you will be able to say, "We recognize now that free
associations are predetermined, not voluntary, as we had believed. We admit
this also as regards the associations connected with the elements of the dream,
but that is not what we are concerned with. You maintain that the associations
to the dream element are determined by the unknown psychic background of
this very element. We do not think that this is a proven fact. We expect, to be
sure, that the association to the dream element will clearly show itself through
one of the complexes of the dreamer, but what good is that to us? That does not
lead us to understand the dream, but rather, as in the case of the association-
experiment, to a knowledge of the so-called complexes. What have these to do
with the dream?"
You are right, but you overlook one point, in fact, the very point because of
which I did not choose the association-experiment as the starting point for this
exposition. In this experiment the one determinate of the reaction, viz., the
stimulus word, is voluntarily chosen. The reaction is then an intermediary
between this stimulus word and the recently aroused complex of the subject. In
the dream the stimulus word is replaced by something that itself has its origin
in the psychic life of the dreamer, in sources unknown to him, hence very likely
itself a product of the complex. It is not an altogether fantastic hypothesis, then,
that the more remote associations, even those that are connected with the dream
element, are determined by no other complex than the one which determines
the dream element itself, and will lead to the disclosure of the complex.
Let me show you by another case that the situation is really as we expect it to
be. Forgetting proper names is really a splendid example for the case of dream
analysis; only here there is present in one person what in the dream
interpretation is divided between two persons. Though I have forgotten a name
temporarily I still retain the certainty that I know the name; that certainty which
we could acquire for the dreamer only by way of the Bernheim experiment. The
forgotten name, however, is not accessible. Cogitation, no matter how
strenuous, does not help. Experience soon tells me that. But I am able each time
to find one or more substitute names for the forgotten name. If such a substitute
name occurs to me spontaneously then the correspondence between this
situation and that of the dream analysis first becomes evident. Nor is the dream
element the real thing, but only a substitute for something else, for what
particular thing I do not know, but am to discover by means of the dream
analysis. The difference lies only in this, that in forgetting a name I recognize
the substitute automatically as unsuitable, while in the dream element we must
acquire this interpretation with great labor. When a name is forgotten, too, there
is a way to go from the substitute to the unknown reality, to arrive at the
forgotten name. If I centre my attention on the substitute name and allow
further associations to accumulate, I arrive in a more or less roundabout way at
the forgotten name, and discover that the spontaneous substitute names,
together with those called up by me, have a certain connection with the
forgotten name, were conditioned by it.
I want to show you an analysis of this type. One day I noticed that I could not
recall the name of the little country in the Riviera of which Monte Carlo is the
capital. It is very annoying, but it is true. I steep myself in all my knowledge
about this country, think of Prince Albert, of the house of Lusignan, of his
marriages, his preference for deep-sea study, and anything else I can think of,
but to no avail. So I give up the thinking, and in place of the lost name allow
substitute names to suggest themselves. They come quickly—Monte Carlo
itself, then Piedmont, Albania, Montevideo, Colico. Albania is the first to
attract my attention, it is replaced by Montenegro, probably because of the
contrast between black and white. Then I see that four of these substitutes
contain the same syllable mon. I suddenly have the forgotten word, and cry
aloud, "Monaco." The substitutes really originated in the forgotten word, the
four first from the first syllable, the last brings back the sequence of syllables
and the entire final syllable. In addition, I am also able easily to discover what
it was that took the name from my memory for a time. Monaco is also the
Italian name of Munich; this latter town exerted the inhibiting influence.
The example is pretty enough, but too simple. In other cases we must add to
the first substitute names a long line of associations, and then the analogy to the
dream interpretation becomes clearer. I have also had such experiences. Once
when a stranger invited me to drink Italian wine with him, it so happened in the
hostelry that he forgot the name of the wine he had intended to order just
because he had retained a most pleasant memory of it. Out of a profusion of
dissimilar substitute associations which came to him in the place of the
forgotten name, I was able to conclude that the memory of some one named
Hedwig had deprived him of the name of the wine, and he actually confirmed
not only that he had first tasted this wine in the company of a Hedwig, but he
also, as a result of this declaration, recollected the name again. He was at the
time happily married, and this Hedwig belonged to former times, not now
recalled with pleasure.
What is possible in forgetting names must work also in dream interpretation,
viz., making the withheld actuality accessible by means of substitutions and
through connecting associations. As exemplified by name-forgetting, we may
conclude that in the case of the associations to the dream element they will be
determined as well by the dream element as by its unknown essential.
Accordingly, we have advanced a few steps in the formulation of our dream
technique.

SEVENTH LECTURE

THE DREAM

Manifest Dream Content and Latent Dream Thought

WE have not studied the problem of errors in vain. Thanks to our efforts in
this field, under the conditions known to you, we have evolved two different
things, a conception of the elements of the dream and a technique for dream
interpretation. The conception of the dream element goes to show something
unreal, a substitute for something else, unknown to the dreamer, similar to the
tendency of errors, a substitute for something the dreamer knows but cannot
approach. We hope to transfer the same conception to the whole dream, which
consists of just such elements. Our method consists of calling up, by means of
free associations, other substitute formations in addition to these elements, from
which we divine what is hidden.
Let me ask you to permit a slight change in our nomenclature which will
greatly increase the flexibility of our vocabulary. Instead of hidden,
unapproachable, unreal, let us give a truer description and say inaccessible or
unknown to the consciousness of the dreamer. By this we mean only what the
connection with the lost word or with the interfering intention of the error can
suggest to you, namely, unconscious for the time being. Naturally in contrast to
this we may term conscious the elements of the dream itself and the substitute
formations just gained by association. As yet there is absolutely no theoretical
construction implied in this nomenclature. The use of the word unconscious as
a suitable and intelligible descriptive epithet is above criticism.
If we transfer our conception from a single element to the entire dream, we
find that the dream as a whole is a distorted substitute for something else,
something unconscious. To discover this unconscious thing is the task of dream
interpretation. From this, three important rules, which we must observe in the
work of dream interpretation, are straightway derived:
1. What the dream seems to say, whether it be sensible or absurd, clear or
confused is not our concern, since it can under no condition be that unconscious
content we are seeking. Later we shall have to observe an obvious limitation of
this rule. 2. The awakening of substitute formations for each element shall be
the sole object of our work. We shall not reflect on these, test their suitability or
trouble how far they lead away from the element of the dream. 3. We shall wait
until the hidden unconscious we are seeking appears of itself, as the missing
word Monaco in the experiment which we have described.
Now we can understand, too, how unimportant it is how much, how little,
above all, how accurately or how indifferently the dream is remembered. For
the dream which is remembered is not the real one, but a distorted substitute,
which is to help us approach the real dream by awakening other substitute
formations and by making the unconscious in the dream conscious. Therefore if
our recollection of the dream was faulty, it has simply brought about a further
distortion of this substitute, a distortion which cannot, however, be
unmotivated.
One can interpret one's own dreams as well as those of others. One learns
even more from these, for the process yields more proof. If we try this, we
observe that something impedes the work. Haphazard ideas arise, but we do not
let them have their way. Tendencies to test and to choose make themselves felt.
As an idea occurs, we say to ourselves "No, that does not fit, that does not
belong here"; of a second "that is too senseless"; of a third, "this is entirely
beside the point"; and one can easily observe how the ideas are stifled and
suppressed by these objections, even before they have become entirely clear.
On the one hand, therefore, too much importance is attached to the dream
elements themselves; on the other, the result of free association is vitiated by
the process of selection. If you are not interpreting the dream alone, if you
allow someone else to interpret it for you, you will soon discover another
motive which induces you to make this forbidden choice. At times you say to
yourself, "No, this idea is too unpleasant, I either will not or cannot divulge
this."
 Clearly these objections are a menace to the success of our work. We must
guard against them, in our own case by the firm resolve not to give way to
them; and in the interpretation of the dreams of others by making the hard and
fast rule for them, never to omit any idea from their account, even if one of the
following four objections should arise: that is, if it should seem too
unimportant, absurd, too irrelevant or too embarrassing to relate. The dreamer
promises to obey this rule, but it is annoying to see how poorly he keeps his
promise at times. At first we account for this by supposing that in spite of the
authoritative assurance which has been given to the dreamer, he is not
impressed with the importance of free association, and plan perhaps to win his
theoretic approval by giving him papers to read or by sending him to lectures
which are to make him a disciple of our views concerning free association. But
we are deterred from such blunders by the observation that, in one's own case,
where convictions may certainly be trusted, the same critical objections arise
against certain ideas, and can only be suppressed subsequently, upon second
thought, as it were.
Instead of becoming vexed at the disobedience of the dreamer, these
experiences can be turned to account in teaching something new, something
which is the more important the less we are prepared for it. We understand that
the task of interpreting dreams is carried on against a certain resistance which
manifests itself by these critical objections. This resistance is independent of
the theoretical conviction of the dreamer. Even more is apparent. We discover
that such a critical objection is never justified. On the contrary, those ideas
which we are so anxious to suppress, prove without exception to be the most
important, the most decisive, in the search for the unconscious. It is even a
mark of distinction if an idea is accompanied by such an objection.
This resistance is something entirely new, a phenomenon which we have
found as a result of our hypotheses although it was not originally included in
them. We are not too pleasantly surprised by this new factor in our problem.
We suspect that it will not make our work any easier. It might even tempt us to
abandon our entire work in connection with the dream. Such an unimportant
thing as the dream and in addition such difficulties instead of a smooth
technique! But from another point of view, these same difficulties may prove
fascinating, and suggest that the work is worth the trouble. Whenever we try to
penetrate to the hidden unconscious, starting out from the substitute which the
dream element represents, we meet with resistance. Hence, we are justified in
supposing that something of weight must be hidden behind the substitute. What
other reason could there be for the difficulties which are maintained for
purposes of concealment? If a child does not want to open his clenched fist, he
is certainly hiding something he ought not to have.
 Just as soon as we bring the dynamic representation of resistance into our
consideration of the case, we must realize that this factor is something
quantitatively variable. There may be greater or lesser resistances and we are
prepared to see these differences in the course of our work. We may perhaps
connect this with another experience found in the work of dream interpretation.
For sometimes only one or two ideas serve to carry us from the dream element
to its unconscious aspect, while at other times long chains of associations and
the suppression of many critical objections are necessary. We shall note that
these variations are connected with the variable force of resistance. This
observation is probably correct. If resistance is slight, then the substitute is not
far removed from the unconscious, but strong resistance carries with it a great
distortion of the unconscious and in addition a long journey back to it.
Perhaps the time has come to take a dream and try out our method to see if
our faith in it shall be confirmed. But which dream shall we choose? You
cannot imagine how hard it is for me to decide, and at this point I cannot
explain the source of the difficulty. Of course, there must be dreams which, as a
whole, have suffered slight distortion, and it would be best to start with one of
these. But which dreams are the least distorted? Those which are sensible and
not confused, of which I have already given you two examples? This would be
a gross misunderstanding. Testing shows that these dreams have suffered by
distortion to an exceptionally high degree. But if I take the first best dream,
regardless of certain necessary conditions, you would probably be very much
disappointed. Perhaps we should have to note such an abundance of ideas
inconnection with single elements of dream that it would be absolutely
impossible to review the work in perspective. If we write the dream out and
confront it with the written account of all the ideas which arise in connection
with it, these may easily amount to a reiteration of the text of the dream. It
would therefore seem most practical to choose for analysis several short dreams
of which each one can at least reveal or confirm something. This is what we
shall decide upon, provided experience should not point out where we shall
really find slightly distorted dreams.
But I know of another way to simplify matters, one which, moreover, lies in
our path. Instead of attempting the interpretation of entire dreams, we shall
limit ourselves to single dream elements and by observing a series of examples
we shall see how these are explained by the application of our method.
1. A lady relates that as a child she often dreamt "that God had a pointed
paper hat on his head." How do you expect to understand that without the help
of the dreamer? Why, it sounds quite absurd. It is no longer absurd when the
lady testifies that as a child she was frequently made to wear such a hat at the
table, because she could not help stealing glances at the plates of her brothers
and sisters to see if one of them had gotten more than she. The hat was
therefore supposed to act as a sort of blinder. This explanation was moreover
historic, and given without the least difficulty. The meaning of this fragment
and of the whole brief dream, is clear with the help of a further idea of the
dreamer. "Since I had heard that God was all-knowing and all-seeing," she said,
"the dream can only mean that I know everything and see everything just as
God does, even when they try to prevent me." This example is perhaps too
simple.
2. A sceptical patient has a longer dream, in which certain people happen to
tell her about my book concerning laughter and praise it highly. Then
something is mentioned about a certain "'canal,' perhaps another book in
which 'canal' occurs, or something else with the word 'canal' ... she doesn't
know ... it is all confused."
Now you will be inclined to think that the element "canal" will evade
interpretation because it is so vague. You are right as to the supposed difficulty,
but it is not difficult because it is vague, but rather it is vague for a different
reason, the same reason which also makes the interpretation difficult. The
dreamer can think of nothing concerning the word canal, I naturally can think
of nothing. A little while later, as a matter of fact on the next day, she tells me
that something occurred to her that may perhaps be related to it, a joke that she
has heard. On a ship between Dover and Calais a well-known author is
conversing with an Englishman, who quoted the following proverb in a certain
connection: "Du sublime au ridicule, il n'y a qu'un pas."[24] The author
answers, "Oui, le pas de Calais,"[25] with which he wishes to say that he finds
France sublime and England ridiculous. But the "Pas de Calais" is really a
canal, namely, the English Channel. Do I think that this idea has anything to do
with the dream? Certainly, I believe that it really gives the solution to the
puzzling dream fragments. Or can you doubt that this joke was already present
in the dream, as the unconscious factor of the element, "canal." Can you take it
for granted that it was subsequently added to it? The idea testifies to the
scepticism which is concealed behind her obtrusive admiration, and the
resistance is probably the common reason for both phenomena, for the fact that
the idea came so hesitatingly and that the decisive element of the dream turned
out to be so vague. Kindly observe at this point the relation of the dream
element to its unconscious factor. It is like a small part of the unconscious, like
an allusion to it; through its isolation it became quite unintelligible.
3. A patient dreams, in the course of a longer dream: "Around a table of
peculiar shape several members of his family are sitting, etc." In connection
with this table, it occurs to him that he saw such a piece of furniture during a
visit to a certain family. Then his thoughts continue: In this family a peculiar
relation had existed between father and son, and soon he adds to this that as a
matter of fact the same relation exists between himself and his father. The table
is therefore taken up into the dream to designate this parallel.
This dreamer had for a long time been familiar with the claims of dream
interpretation. Otherwise he might have taken exception to the fact that so
trivial a detail as the shape of a table should be taken as the basis of the
investigation. As a matter of fact we judge nothing in the dream as accidental
or indifferent, and we expect to reach our conclusion by the explanation of just
such trivial and unmotivated details. Perhaps you will be surprised that the
dream work should arouse the thought "we are in exactly the same position as
they are," just by the choice of the table. But even this becomes clear when you
learn that the name of the family in question is Tischler. By permitting his own
family to sit at such a table, he intends to express that they too are Tischler.
Please note how, in relating such a dream interpretation, one must of necessity
become indiscreet. Here you have arrived at one of the difficulties in the choice
of examples that I indicated before. I could easily have substituted another
example for this one, but would probably have avoided this indiscretion at the
cost of committing another one in its place.
The time has come to introduce two new terms, which we could have used
long ago. We shall call that which the dream relates, the manifest content of the
dream; that which is hidden, which we can only reach by the analysis of ideas
we shall call latent dream thoughts. We may now consider the connection
between the manifest dream content and the latent dream thoughts as they are
revealed in these examples. Many different connections can exist. In examples
1 and 2 the manifest content is also a constituent part of the latent thought, but
only a very small part of it. A small piece of a great composite psychic
structure in the unconscious dream thought has penetrated into the manifest
dream, like a fragment of it, or in other cases, like an allusion to it, like a
catchword or an abbreviation in the telegraphic code. The interpretation must
mould this fragment, or indication, into a whole, as was done most successfully
in example 2. One sort of distortion of which the dream mechanism consists is
therefore substitution by means of a fragment or an allusion. In the third,
moreover, we must recognize another relation which we shall see more clearly
and distinctly expressed in the following examples:
4. The dreamer "pulls a certain woman of his acquaintance from behind a
bed." He finds the meaning of this dream element himself by his first
association. It means: This woman "has a pull" with him.[26]
5. Another man dreams that "his brother is in a closet." The first association
substitutes clothes-press for closet, and the second gives the meaning: his
brother is close-pressed for money.[27]
 6. The dreamer "climbs a mountain from the top of which he has an
extraordinarily distant view." This sounds quite sensible; perhaps there is
nothing about it that needs interpretation, and it is simply necessary to find out
which reminiscence this dream touches upon and why it was recalled. But you
are mistaken; it is evident that this dream requires interpretation as well as any
other which is confused. For no previous mountain climbing of his own occurs
to the dreamer, but he remembers that an acquaintance of his is publishing a
"Rundschau," which deals with our relation to the furthermost parts of the
earth. The latent dream thought is therefore in this case an identification of the
dreamer with the "Rundschauer."
Here you find a new type of connection between the manifest content and the
latent dream element. The former is not so much a distortion of the latter as a
representation of it, a plastic concrete perversion that is based on the sound of
the word. However, it is for this very reason again a distortion, for we have
long ago forgotten from which concrete picture the word has arisen, and
therefore do not recognize it by the image which is substituted for it. If you
consider that the manifest dream consists most often of visual images, and less
frequently of thoughts and words, you can imagine that a very particular
significance in dream formation is attached to this sort of relation. You can also
see that in this manner it becomes possible to create substitute formations for a
great number of abstract thoughts in the manifest dream, substitutions that
serve the purpose of further concealment all the same. This is the technique of
our picture puzzle. What the origin is of the semblance of wit which
accompanies such representations is a particular question which we need not
touch upon at this time.
A fourth type of relation between the manifest and the latent dream cannot be
dealt with until its cue in the technique has been given. Even then I shall not
have given you a complete enumeration, but it will be sufficient for our
purpose.
Have you the courage to venture upon the interpretation of an entire dream?
Let us see if we are well enough equipped for this undertaking. Of course, I
shall not choose one of the most obscure, but one nevertheless that shows in
clear outline the general characteristics of a dream.
A young woman who has been married for many years dreams: "She is
sitting in the theatre with her husband; one side of the orchestra is entirely
unoccupied. Her husband tells her that Elise L. and her bridegroom had also
wished to come, but had only been able to procure poor seats, three
for 1 Fl., 50 Kr. and those of course they could not take. She thinks this is no
misfortune for them."
 The first thing that the dreamer has to testify is that the occasion for the
dream is touched upon in its manifest content. Her husband had really told her
that Elise L., an acquaintance of about her age, had become engaged. The
dream is the reaction to this news. We already know that in the case of many
dreams it is easy to trace such a cause to the preceding day, and that the
dreamer often gives these deductions without any difficulty. The dreamer also
places at our disposal further information for other parts of the manifest dream
content. Whence the detail that one side of the orchestra is unoccupied? It is an
allusion to an actual occurrence of the previous week. She had made up her
mind to go to a certain performance and had procured tickets in advance, so
much in advance that she had been forced to pay a preference tax.[28] When she
arrived at the theatre, she saw how needless had been her anxiety, for one side
of the orchestra was almost empty. She could have bought the tickets on the
day of the performance itself. Her husband would not stop teasing her about her
excessive haste. Whence the 1 Fl. 50 Kr.? From a very different connection that
has nothing to do with the former, but which also alludes to an occurrence of
the previous day. Her sister-in-law had received 150 florins as a present from
her husband, and knew no better, the poor goose, than to hasten to the jeweler
and spend the money on a piece of jewelry. Whence the number 3? She can
think of nothing in connection with this unless one stresses the association that
the bride, Elise L., is only three months younger than she herself, who has been
married for almost ten years. And the absurdity of buying three tickets for two
people? She says nothing of this, and indeed denies all further associations or
information.
But she has given us so much material in her few associations, that it
becomes possible to derive the latent dream thought from it. It must strike us
that in her remarks concerning the dream, time elements which constitute a
common element in the various parts of this material appear at several points.
She attended to the tickets too soon, took them too hastily, so that she had to
pay more than usual for them; her sister-in-law likewise hastened to carry her
money to the jeweler's to buy a piece of jewelry, just as if she might miss it. Let
us add to the expressions "too early," "precipitately," which are emphasized so
strongly, the occasion for the dream, namely, that her friend only three months
younger than herself had even now gotten a good husband, and the criticism
expressed in the condemnation of her sister-in-law, that it was foolish to hurry
so. Then the following construction of the latent dream thought, for which the
manifest dream is a badly distorted substitute, comes to us almost
spontaneously:
"How foolish it was of me to hurry so in marrying! Elise's example shows me
that I could have gotten a husband later too." (The precipitateness is
represented by her own behavior in buying the tickets, and that of her sister-in-
law in purchasing jewelry. Going to the theatre was substituted for getting
married. This appears to have been the main thought; and perhaps we may
continue, though with less certainty, because the analysis in these parts is not
supported by statements of the dreamer.) "And I would have gotten 100 times
as much for my money." (150 Fl. is 100 times as much as 1 Fl. 50 Kr.). If we
might substitute the dowry for the money, then it would mean that one buys a
husband with a dowry; the jewelry as well as the poor seats would represent the
husband. It would be even more desirable if the fragment "3 seats" had
something to do with a husband. But our understanding does not penetrate so
far. We have only guessed that the dream expresses her disparagement of her
own husband, and her regret at having married so early.
It is my opinion that we are more surprised and confused than satisfied by the
result of this first dream interpretation. We are swamped by more impressions
than we can master. We see that the teachings of dream interpretation are not
easily exhausted. Let us hasten to select those points that we recognize as
giving us new, sound insight.
In the first place, it is remarkable that in the latent thought the main emphasis
falls on the element of haste; in the manifest dream there is absolutely no
mention of this to be found. Without the analysis we should not have had any
idea that this element was of any importance at all. So it seems possible that
just the main thing, the central point of the unconscious thoughts, may be
absent in the manifest dream. Because of this, the original impression in the
dream must of necessity be entirely changed. Secondly: In the dream there is a
senseless combination, 3 for 1 Fl. 50 Kr.; in the dream thought we divine the
sentence, "It was senseless (to marry so early)." Can one deny that this thought,
"It was senseless," was represented in the manifest dream by the introduction of
an absurd element? Thirdly: Comparison will show that the relation between
the manifest and latent elements is not simple, certainly not of such a sort that a
manifest element is always substituted for the latent. There must rather be a
quantitative relationship between the two groups, according to which a
manifest element may represent several latent ones, or a latent element
represented by several manifest elements.
Much that is surprising might also be said of the sense of the dream and the
dreamer's reaction to it. She acknowledges the interpretation but wonders at it.
She did not know that she disparaged her husband so, and she did not know
why she should disparage him to such a degree. There is still much that is
incomprehensible. I really believe that we are not yet fully equipped for dream
interpretation, and that we must first receive further instruction and preparation.
 EIGHTH LECTURE

THE DREAM

Dreams of Childhood

WE think we have advanced too rapidly. Let us go back a little. Before our
last attempt to overcome the difficulties of dream distortion through our
technique, we had decided that it would be best to avoid them by limiting
ourselves only to those dreams in which distortion is either entirely absent or of
trifling importance, if there are such. But here again we digress from the history
of the evolution of our knowledge, for as a matter of fact we become aware of
dreams entirely free of distortion only after the consistent application of our
method of interpretation and after complete analysis of the distorted dream.
The dreams we are looking for are found in children. They are short, clear,
coherent, easy to understand, unambiguous, and yet unquestionable dreams.
But do not think that all children's dreams are like this. Dream distortion makes
its appearance very early in childhood, and dreams of children from five to
eight years of age have been recorded that showed all the characteristics of later
dreams. But if you will limit yourselves to the age beginning with conscious
psychic activity, up to the fourth or fifth year, you will discover a series of
dreams that are of a so-called infantile character. In a later period of childhood
you will be able to find some dreams of this nature occasionally. Even among
adults, dreams that closely resemble the typically infantile ones occur under
certain conditions.
From these children's dreams we gain information concerning the nature of
dreams with great ease and certainty, and we hope it will prove decisive and of
universal application.
1. For the understanding of these dreams we need no analysis, no technical
methods. We need not question the child that is giving an account of his dream.
But one must add to this a story taken from the life of the child. An experience
of the previous day will always explain the dream to us. The dream is a sleep-
reaction of psychic life upon these experiences of the day.
We shall now consider a few examples so that we may base our further
deductions upon them.
a). A boy of 22 months is to present a basket of cherries as a birthday gift. He
plainly does so very unwillingly, although they promise him that he will get
some of them himself. The next morning he relates as his dream, "Hermann eat
all cherries."
b). A little girl of three and a quarter years makes her first trip across a lake.
At the landing she does not want to leave the boat and cries bitterly. The time
of the trip seems to her to have passed entirely too rapidly. The next morning
she says, "Last night I rode on the lake." We may add the supplementary fact
that this trip lasted longer.
c). A boy of five and a quarter years is taken on an excursion into the
Escherntal near Hallstatt. He had heard that Hallstatt lay at the foot of the
Dachstein, and had shown great interest in this mountain. From his home in
Aussee there was a beautiful view of the Dachstein, and with a telescope one
could discern the Simonyhütte upon it. The child had tried again and again to
see it through the telescope, with what result no one knew. He started on the
excursion in a joyously expectant mood. Whenever a new mountain came in
sight the boy asked, "Is that the Dachstein?" The oftener this question was
answered in the negative, the more moody he became; later he became entirely
silent and would not take part in a small climb to a waterfall. They thought he
was overtired, but the next morning, he said quite happily, "Last night I
dreamed that we were in the Simonyhütte." It was with this expectation,
therefore, that he had taken part in the excursion. The only detail he gave was
one he had heard before, "you had to climb steps for six hours."
These three dreams will suffice for all the information we desire.
2. We see that children's dreams are not meaningless; they are intelligible,
significant, psychic acts. You will recall what I represented to you as the
medical opinion concerning the dream, the simile of untrained fingers
wandering aimlessly over the keys of the piano. You cannot fail to see how
decidedly these dreams of childhood are opposed to this conception. But it
would be strange indeed if the child brought forth complete psychic products in
sleep, while the adult in the same condition contents himself with spasmodic
reactions. Indeed, we have every reason to attribute the more normal and
deeper sleep to the child.
3. Dream distortion is lacking in these dreams, therefore they need no
interpretation. The manifest and latent dreams are merged. Dream distortion is
therefore not inherent in the dream. I may assume that this relieves you of a
great burden. But upon closer consideration we shall have to admit of a tiny bit
of distortion, a certain differentiation between manifest dream content and
latent dream thought, even in these dreams.
4. The child's dream is a reaction to an experience of the day, which has left
behind it a regret, a longing or an unfulfilled desire. The dream brings about
the direct unconcealed fulfillment of this wish. Now recall our discussions
concerning the importance of the role of external or internal bodily stimuli as
disturbers of sleep, or as dream producers. We learned definite facts about this,
but could only explain a very small number of dreams in this way. In these
children's dreams nothing points to the influence of such somatic stimuli; we
cannot be mistaken, for the dreams are entirely intelligible and easy to survey.
But we need not give up the theory of physical causation entirely on this
account. We can only ask why at the outset we forgot that besides the physical
stimuli there are also psychic sleep-disturbing stimuli. For we know that it is
these stimuli that commonly cause the disturbed sleep of adults by preventing
them from producing the ideal condition of sleep, the withdrawal of interest
from the world. The dreamer does not wish to interrupt his life, but would
rather continue his work with the things that occupy him, and for this reason he
does not sleep. The unfulfilled wish, to which he reacts by means of the dream,
is the psychic sleep-disturbing stimulus for the child.
5. From this point we easily arrive at an explanation of the function of the
dream. The dream, as a reaction to the psychic stimulus, must have the value of
a release of this stimulus which results in its elimination and in the continuation
of sleep. We do not know how this release is made possible by the dream,
but we note that the dream is not a disturber of sleep, as calumny says, but a
guardian of sleep, whose duty it is to quell disturbances. It is true, we think we
would have slept better if we had not dreamt, but here we are wrong; as a
matter of fact, we would not have slept at all without the help of the dream.
That we have slept so soundly is due to the dream alone. It could not help
disturbing us slightly, just as the night watchman often cannot avoid making a
little noise while he drives away the rioters who would awaken us with their
noise.
6. One main characteristic of the dream is that a wish is its source, and that
the content of the dream is the gratification of this wish. Another equally
constant feature is that the dream does not merely express a thought, but also
represents the fulfillment of this wish in the form of a hallucinatory experience.
"I should like to travel on the lake," says the wish that excites the dream; the
dream itself has as its content "I travel on the lake." One distinction between
the latent and manifest dream, a distortion of the latent dream thought,
therefore remains even in the case of these simple children's dreams,
namely, the translation of the thought into experience. In the interpretation of
the dream it is of utmost importance that this change be traced back. If this
should prove to be an extremely common characteristic of the dream, then the
above mentioned dream fragment, "I see my brother in a closet" could not be
translated, "My brother is close-pressed," but rather, "I wish that my brother
were close-pressed, my brother should be close-pressed." Of the two universal
characteristics of the dream we have cited, the second plainly has greater
prospects of unconditional acknowledgment than the first. Only extensive
investigation can ascertain that the cause of the dream must always be a wish,
and cannot also be an anxiety, a plan or a reproach; but this does not alter the
other characteristic, that the dream does not simply reproduce the stimulus but
by experiencing it anew, as it were, removes, expells and settles it.
7. In connection with these characteristics of the dream we can again resume
the comparison between the dream and the error. In the case of the latter we
distinguish an interfering tendency and one interfered with, and the error is the
compromise between the two. The dream fits into the same scheme. The
tendency interfered with, in this case, can be no other than that of sleep. For the
interfering tendency we substitute the psychic stimulus, the wish which strives
for its fulfillment, let us say, for thus far we are not familiar with any other
sleep-disturbing psychic stimulus. In this instance also the dream is the result of
compromise. We sleep, and yet we experience the removal of a wish; we
gratify the wish, but at the same time continue to sleep. Both are partly carried
out and partly given up.
8. You will remember that we once hoped to gain access to the understanding
of the dream problem by the fact that certain very transparent phantasy
formations are called day dreams. Now these day dreams are actual wish
fulfillments, fulfillments of ambitious or erotic wishes with which we are
familiar; but they are conscious, and though vividly imagined, they are never
hallucinatory experiences. In this instance, therefore, the less firmly established
of the two main characteristics of the dream holds, while the other proves itself
entirely dependent upon the condition of sleep and impossible to the waking
state. In colloquial usage, therefore, there is a presentment of the fact that the
fulfillment of a wish is a main characteristic of the dream. Furthermore, if the
experience in the dream is a transformed representation only made possible by
the condition of sleep—in other words, a sort of nocturnal day dream—then we
can readily understand that the occurrence of phantasy formations can release
the nocturnal stimulus and bring satisfaction. For day dreaming is an activity
closely bound up in gratification and is, indeed, pursued only for this reason.
Not only this but other colloquial usages also express the same feeling. Well-
known proverbs say, "The pig dreams of acorns, the goose of maize," or ask,
"Of what does the hen dream? Of millet." So the proverb descends even lower
than we do, from the child to the animal, and maintains that the content of a
dream is the satisfaction of a need. Many turns of speech seem to point to the
same thing—"dreamlike beauty," "I should never have dreamed of that," "in my
wildest dreams I hadn't imagined that." This is open partisanship on the part of
colloquial usage. For there are also dreams of fear and dreams of embarrassing
or indifferent content, but they have not been drawn into common usage. It is
true that common usage recognizes "bad" dreams, but still the dream plainly
connotates to it only the beautiful wish fulfillment. There is indeed no proverb
that tells us that the pig or the goose dreams of being slaughtered.
 Of course it is unbelievable that the wish-fulfillment characteristic has not
been noted by writers on the dream. Indeed, this was very often the case, but
none of them thought of acknowledging this characteristic as universal and of
making it the basis of an explanation of the dream. We can easily imagine what
may have deterred them and shall discuss it subsequently.
See what an abundance of information we have gained, with almost no effort,
from the consideration of children's dreams—the function of the dream as a
guardian of sleep; its origin from two rival tendencies, of which the one, the
longing for sleep, remains constant, while the other tries to satisfy a psychic
stimulus; the proof that the dream is a significant psychic act; its two main
characteristics: wish fulfillment and hallucinatory experience. And we were
almost able to forget that we are engaged in psychoanalysis. Aside from its
connection with errors our work has no specific connotation. Any psychologist,
who is entirely ignorant of the claims of psychoanalysis, could have given this
explanation of children's dreams. Why has no one done so?
If there were only infantile dreams, our problem would be solved, our task
accomplished, and that without questioning the dreamer, or approaching the
unconscious, and without taking free association into consideration. The
continuation of our task plainly lies in this direction. We have already
repeatedly had the experience that characteristics that at first seemed
universally true, have subsequently held good only for a certain kind and for a
certain number of dreams. It is therefore for us to decide whether the common
characteristics which we have gathered from children's dreams can be applied
universally, whether they also hold for those dreams that are not transparent,
whose manifest content shows no connection with wishes left over from the
previous day. We think that these dreams have undergone considerable
distortion and for this reason are not to be judged superficially. We also suspect
that for the explanation of this distortion we shall need the
psychoanalytic method which we could dispense with in the understanding of
children's dreams.
There is at any rate a class of dreams that are undistorted, and, just like
children's dreams, are easily recognizable as wish fulfillments. It is those that
are called up throughout life by the imperative needs of the body—hunger,
thirst, sexual desire—hence wish fulfillments in reaction to internal physical
stimuli. For this reason, I have noted the dream of a young girl, that consisted
of a menu following her name (Anna F......, strawberry, huckleberry, egg-dish,
pap), as a reaction to an enforced day of fasting on account of a spoiled
stomach, which was directly traceable to the eating of the fruits twice
mentioned in the dream. At the same time, the grandmother, whose age added
to that of her grandchild would make a full seventy, had to go without food for
a day on account of kidney-trouble, and dreamed the same night that she had
been invited out and that the finest tid-bits had been set before her.
Observations with prisoners who are allowed to go hungry, or with people who
suffer privations on travels or expeditions, show that under these conditions the
dreams regularly deal with the satisfaction of these needs. Otto Nordenskjold,
in his book Antarctic (1904), testifies to the same thing concerning his crew,
who were ice-bound with him during the winter (Vol. 1, page 336). "Very
significant in determining the trend of our inmost thoughts were our dreams,
which were never more vivid and numerous than just at this time. Even those of
our comrades who ordinarily dreamed but seldom, now had long stories to tell,
when in the morning we exchanged our latest experiences in that realm of
phantasy. All of them dealt with that outside world that now was so far away
from us, but often they fitted into our present condition. Food and drink were
most often the pivots about which our dreams revolved. One of us, who
excelled in going to great dinners in his sleep, was most happy whenever he
could tell us in the morning that he attended a dinner of three courses; another
one dreamed of tobacco, whole mountains of tobacco; still another dreamed of
a ship that came along on the open sea, under full sail. One other dream
deserves mention: The postman comes with the mail and gives a long
explanation of why it is so late; he had delivered it to the wrong address and
only after great trouble on his part had succeeded in getting it back. Of course
one occupies himself with even more impossible things in sleep, but in nearly
all the dreams that I myself dreamed or heard tell of, the lack of phantasy was
quite striking. It would surely be of great psychological interest if all these
dreams were recorded. It is easy to understand how we longed for sleep, since it
could offer us everything for which each one of us felt the most burning
desire." I quote further from Du Prel. "Mungo Park, who during a trip in Africa
was almost exhausted, dreamed without interruption of the fertile valleys and
fields of his home. Trenck, tortured by hunger in the redoubt at Magdeburg,
likewise saw himself surrounded by wonderful meals, and George Back, who
took part in Franklin's first expedition, dreamed regularly and consistently of
luxurious meals when, as a result of terrible privations, he was nearly dead of
hunger."
A man who feels great thirst at night after enjoying highly seasoned food for
supper, often dreams that he is drinking. It is of course impossible to satisfy a
rather strong desire for food or drink by means of the dream; from such a
dream one awakes thirsty and must now drink real water. The effect of the
dream is in this case practically trifling, but it is none the less clear that it was
called up for the purpose of maintaining the sleep in spite of the urgent impulse
to awake and to act. Dreams of satisfaction often overcome needs of a lesser
intensity.
 In a like manner, under the influence of sexual stimuli, the dream brings
about satisfaction that shows noteworthy peculiarities. As a result of the
characteristic of the sexual urge which makes it somewhat less dependent upon
its object than hunger and thirst, satisfaction in a dream of pollution may be an
actual one, and as a result of difficulties to be mentioned later in connection
with the object, it happens especially often that the actual satisfaction is
connected with confused or distorted dream content. This peculiarity of the
dream of pollution, as O. Rank has observed, makes it a fruitful subject to
pursue in the study of dream distortion. Moreover, all dreams of desire of
adults usually contain something besides satisfaction, something that has its
origin in the sources of the purely psychic stimuli, and which requires
interpretation to render it intelligible.
Moreover we shall not maintain that the wish-fulfillment dreams of the
infantile kind occur in adults only as reactions to the known imperative desires.
We also know of short clear dreams of this sort under the influence of
dominating situations that arise from unquestionably psychic sources. As, for
example, in dreams of impatience, whenever a person has made preparations
for a journey, for a theatrical performance, for a lecture or for a visit, and now
dreams of the anticipated fulfillment of his expectations, and so arrives at his
goal the night before the actual experience, in the theatre or in conversation
with his host. Or the well-named dreams of comfort, when a person who likes
to prolong his sleep, dreams that he is already up, is washing himself, or is
already in school, while as a matter of fact he continues sleeping, hence would
rather get up in a dream than in reality. The desire for sleep which we have
recognized as a regular part of the dream structure becomes intense in these
dreams and appears in them as the actual shaping force of the dream. The wish
for sleep properly takes its place beside other great physical desires.
At this point I refer you to a picture by Schwind, from the Schack Gallery in
Munich, so that you may see how rightly the artist has conceived the origin of a
dream from a dominating situation. It is the Dream of a Prisoner,[29] which can
have no other subject than his release. It is a very neat stroke that the release
should be effected through the window, for the ray of light that awakens the
prisoner comes through the same window. The gnomes standing one above the
other probably represent the successive positions which he himself had to take
in climbing to the height of the window, and I do not think I am mistaken or
that I attribute too much preconcerted design to the artist, by noting that the
uppermost of the gnomes, who is filing the grating (and so does what the
prisoner would like to do) has the features of the prisoner.
In all other dreams except those of children and those of the infantile type,
distortion, as we have said, blocks our way. At the outset we cannot ascertain
whether they are also wish fulfillments, as we suspect; from their manifest
content we cannot determine from what psychic stimulus they derive their
origin, and we cannot prove that they also are occupied in doing away with the
stimulus and in satisfying it. They must probably be interpreted, that is,
translated; their distortion must be annulled; their manifest content replaced by
their latent thought before we can judge whether what we have found in
children's dreams may claim a universal application for all dreams.

NINTH LECTURE

THE DREAM

The Dream Censor

WE have learned to know the origin, nature and function of the dream from
the study of children's dreams. Dreams are the removal of sleep-disturbing
psychic stimuli by way of hallucinated satisfaction. Of adults' dreams, to be
sure, we could explain only one group, what we characterized as dreams of an
infantile type. As to the others we know nothing as yet, nor do we understand
them. For the present, however, we have obtained a result whose significance
we do not wish to under-estimate. Every time a dream is completely
comprehensible to us, it proves to be an hallucinated wish-fulfillment. This
coincidence cannot be accidental, nor is it an unimportant matter.
We conclude, on the basis of various considerations and by analogy to the
conception of mistakes, that another type of dream is a distorted substitute for
an unknown content and that it must first be led back to that content. Our next
task is the investigation and the understanding of this dream distortion.
Dream distortion is the thing which makes the dream seem strange and
incomprehensible to us. We want to know several things about it; firstly,
whence it comes, its dynamics; secondly, what it does; and finally, how it does
it. We can say at this point that dream distortion is the product of the dream
work, that is, of the mental functioning of which the dream itself is the
conscious symptom. Let us describe the dream work and trace it back to the
forces which work upon it.
And now I shall ask you to listen to the following dream. It was recorded by
a lady of our profession, and according to her, originated with a highly
cultivated and respected lady of advanced age. No analysis of this dream was
made. Our informant remarks that to a psychoanalyst it needs no interpretation.
The dreamer herself did not interpret it, but she judged and condemned it as if
she understood its interpretation. For she said concerning it: "That a woman of
fifty should dream such abominable, stupid stuff—a woman who has no other
thought, day and night, than to care for her child!"
And now follows the dreams of the "services of love." "She goes into
Military Hospital No. 1, and says to the sentry at the gate, that she must speak
to the chief physician ... (she mentions a name which is not familiar to her), as
she wants to offer her service to the hospital. She stresses the word 'service,' so
love services. Since she is an old lady he lets her pass after some hesitation. But
instead of reaching the chief physician, she finds herself in a large somber room
in which there are many officers and army doctors sitting and standing around a
long table. She turns with her proposal to a staff doctor who, after a few words,
soon understands her. The words of her speech in the dream are, 'I and
numerous other women and girls of Vienna are ready for the soldiers, troops,
and officers, without distinction....' Here in the dream follows a murmuring.
That the idea is, however, correctly understood by those present she sees from
the semi-embarrassed, somewhat malicious expressions of the officers. The
lady then continues, 'I know that our decision sounds strange, but we are in
bitter earnest. The soldier in the field is not asked either whether or not he
wants to die.' A moment of painful silence follows. The staff doctor puts his
arm around her waist and says, 'Madame, let us assume that it really came to
that ...' (murmurs). She withdraws from his arm with the thought, 'They are all
alike!' and answers, 'My heavens, I am an old woman, and perhaps will never
be confronted with that situation; one consideration, moreover, must be kept in
mind: the consideration of age, which prevents an older woman from ... with a
very young boy ... (murmurs) ... that would be horrible.' The staff doctor, 'I
understand perfectly.' Several officers, among them one who had paid court to
her in her youth, laugh loudly, and the lady asks to be conducted to the chief
physician, whom she knows, so that everything may be arranged. At this she
realizes with great dismay that she does not know his name. The staff officer,
nevertheless, very politely and respectfully shows her the way to the second
story, up a very narrow winding iron stairway which leads to the upper story
directly from the door of the room. In going up she hears an officer say, 'That is
a tremendous decision irrespective of whether a woman is young or old; all
honor to her!'
"With the feeling that she is merely doing her duty, she goes up an endless
staircase."
This dream she repeats twice in the course of a few weeks, with—as the lady
notices—quite insignificant and very senseless changes.
This dream corresponds in its structure to a day dream. It has few gaps, and
many of its individual points might have been elucidated as to content through
inquiry, which, as you know, was omitted. The conspicuous and interesting
point for us, however, is that the dream shows several gaps, gaps not of
recollection, but of original content. In three places the content is apparently
obliterated, the speeches in which these gaps occur are interrupted by murmurs.
Since we have performed no analysis, we have, strictly speaking, also no right
to make any assertion about the meaning of the dream. Yet there are
intimations given from which something may be concluded. For example, the
phrase "services of love," and above all the bits of speech which immediately
precede the murmurs, demand a completion which can have but one meaning.
If we interpolate these, then the phantasy yields as its content the idea that the
dreamer is ready, as an act of patriotic duty, to offer her person for the
satisfaction of the erotic desires of the army, officers as well as troops. That
certainly is exceedingly shocking, it is an impudent libidinous phantasy, but—it
does not occur in the dream at all. Just at the point where consistency would
demand this confession, there is a vague murmur in the manifest dream,
something is lost or suppressed.
I hope you will recognize the inevitability of the conclusion that it is the
shocking character of these places in the dream that was the motive for their
suppression. Yet where do you find a parallel for this state of affairs? In these
times you need not seek far. Take up any political paper and you will find that
the text is obliterated here and there, and that in its place shimmers the white of
the paper. You know that that is the work of the newspaper censor. In these
blank spaces something was printed which was not to the liking of the
censorship authorities, and for that reason it was crossed out. You think that it
is a pity, that it probably was the most interesting part, it was "the best part."
In other places the censorship did not touch the completed sentence. The
author foresaw what parts might be expected to meet with the objection of the
censor, and for that reason he softened them by way of prevention, modified
them slightly, or contented himself with innuendo and allusion to what really
wanted to flow from his pen. Thus the sheet, it is true, has no blank spaces, but
from certain circumlocutions and obscurities of expression you will be able to
guess that thoughts of the censorship were the restraining motive.
Now let us keep to this parallel. We say that the omitted dream speeches,
which were disguised by a murmuring, were also sacrifices to a censorship. We
actually speak of a dream censor to which we may ascribe a contributing part
in the dream distortion. Wherever there are gaps in the manifest dream, it is the
fault of the dream censor. Indeed, we should go further, and recognize each
time as a manifestation of the dream censor, those places at which a dream
element is especially faint, indefinitely and doubtfully recalled among other,
more clearly delineated portions. But it is only rarely that this censorship
manifests itself so undisguisedly, so naively one may say, as in the example of
the dream of the "services of love." Far more frequently the censorship
manifests itself according to the second type, through the production of
weakenings, innuendoes, allusions instead of direct truthfulness.
For a third type of dream censorship I know of no parallel in the practice of
newspaper censorship, yet it is just this type that I can demonstrate by the only
dream example which we have so far analyzed. You will remember the dream
of the "three bad theatre tickets for one florin and a half." In the latent thoughts
of this dream, the element "precipitately, too soon," stood in the foreground. It
means: "It was foolish to marry so early, it was also foolish to buy theatre
tickets so early, it was ridiculous of the sister-in-law to spend her money
so hastily, merely to buy an ornament." Nothing of this central element of the
dream thought was evident in the manifest dream. In the latter, going to the
theatre and getting the tickets were shoved into the foreground. Through this
displacement of the emphasis, this regrouping of the elements of the content,
the manifest dream becomes so dissimilar from the latent dream thoughts that
no one would suspect the latter behind the former. This displacement of
emphasis is a favorite device of the dream distortion and gives the dream that
strangeness which makes the dreamer himself unwilling to recognize it as his
own production.
Omission, modification, regrouping of the material, these, then, are the
effects of the dream censor and the devices of dream distortion. The dream
censorship itself is the author, or one of the authors, of the dream distortion
whose investigation now occupies us. Modification and rearrangement we are
already accustomed to summarize asdisplacement.
After these remarks concerning the effects of the dream censor, let us now
turn to their dynamics. I hope you will not consider the expression too
anthropomorphically, and picture the dream censor as a severe little manikin
who lives in a little brain chamber and there performs his duties; nor should
you attempt to localize him too much, to think of a brain center from which his
censoring influence emanates, and which would cease with the injury or
extirpation of this center. For the present, the term "dream censor" is no more
than a very convenient phrase for a dynamic relationship. This phrase does not
prevent us from asking by what tendencies such influence is exerted and upon
which tendencies it works; nor will we be surprised to discover that we have
already encountered the dream censor before, perhaps without recognizing him.
For such was actually the case. You will remember that we had a surprising
experience when we began to apply our technique of free association. We then
began to feel that some sort of a resistance blocked our efforts to proceed from
the dream element to the unconscious element for which the former is the
substitute. This resistance, we said, may be of varying strength, enormous at
one time, quite negligible at another. In the latter case we need cross only a few
intermediate steps in our work of interpretation. But when the resistance is
strong, then we must go through a long chain of associations, are taken far
afield and must overcome all the difficulties which present themselves as
critical objections to the association technique. What we met with in the work
of interpretation, we must now bring into the dream work as the dream censor.
The resistance to interpretation is nothing but the objectivation of the dream
censor. The latter proves to us that the force of the censor has not spent itself in
causing the dream distortion, has not since been extinguished, but that this
censorship continues as a permanent institution with the purpose of preserving
the distortion. Moreover, just as in the interpretation the strength of the
resistance varied with each element, so also the distortion produced by the
censor in the same dream is of varying magnitude for each element. If one
compares the manifest with the latent dream one sees that certain isolated latent
elements have been practically eliminated, others more or less modified, and
still others left unchanged, indeed, have perhaps been taken over into the dream
content with additional strength.
But we wanted to discover what purposes the censorship serves and against
which tendencies it acts. This question, which is fundamental to the
understanding of the dream, indeed perhaps to human life, is easily answered if
we look over a series of those dreams which have been analyzed. The
tendencies which the censorship exercises are those which are recognized by
the waking judgment of the dreamer, those with which he feels himself in
harmony. You may rest assured that when you reject an accurate interpretation
of a dream of your own, you do so with the same motives with which the dream
censor works, the motives with which it produces the dream distortion and
makes the interpretation necessary. Recall the dream of our fifty-year old lady.
Without having interpreted it, she considers her dream abominable, would have
been still more outraged if our informant had told her anything about the
indubitable meaning; and it is just on account of this condemnation that the
shocking spots in her dream were replaced by a murmur.
The tendencies, however, against which the dream censor directs itself, must
now be described from the standpoint of this instance. One can say only that
these tendencies are of an objectionable nature throughout, that they are
shocking from an ethical, aesthetic and social point of view, that they are things
one does not dare even to think, or thinks of only with abhorrence. These
censored wishes which have attained to a distorted expression in the dream, are
above all expressions of a boundless, reckless egoism. And indeed, the personal
ego occurs in every dream to play the major part in each of them, even if it can
successfully disguise itself in the manifest content. This sacro egoismo of the
dream is surely not unconnected with the sleep-inducing cessation of psychic
activity which consists, it should be noted, in the withdrawal of interest from
the entire external world.
 The ego which has been freed of all ethical restraints feels itself in accord
with all the demands of the sexual striving, with those demands which have
long since been condemned by our aesthetic rearing, demands of such a
character that they resist all our moral demands for restraint. The pleasure-
striving—the libido, as we term it—chooses its objects without inhibitions, and
indeed, prefers those that are forbidden. It chooses not only the wife of another,
but, above all, those incestuous objects declared sacred by the agreement of
mankind—the mother and sister in the man's case, the father and brother in the
woman's. Even the dream of our fifty-year old lady is an incestuous one, its
libido unmistakably directed toward her son. Desires which we believe to be far
from human nature show themselves strong enough to arouse dreams. Hate,
too, expends itself without restraint. Revenge and murderous wishes toward
those standing closest to the dreamer are not unusual, toward those best
beloved in daily life, toward parents, brothers and sisters, toward one's spouse
and one's own children. These censored wishes seem to arise from a veritable
hell; no censorship seems too harsh to be applied against their waking
interpretation.
But do not reproach the dream itself for this evil content. You will not, I am
sure, forget that the dream is charged with the harmless, indeed the useful
function of guarding sleep from disturbance. This evil content, then, does not
lie in the nature of the dream. You know also that there are dreams which can
be recognized as the satisfaction of justified wishes and urgent bodily needs.
These, to be sure, undergo no dream distortion. They need none. They can
satisfy their function without offending the ethical and aesthetic tendencies of
the ego. And will you also keep in mind the fact that the amount of dream
distortion is proportional to two factors. On the one hand, the worse the
censorable wish, the greater the distortion; on the other hand, however, the
stricter the censor himself is at any particular time the greater the distortion will
be also. A young, strictly reared and prudish girl will, by reason of those
factors, disfigure with an inexorable censorship those dream impulses which
we physicians, for example, and which the dreamer herself ten years later,
would recognize as permissible, harmless, libidinous desires.
Besides, we are far from being at the point where we can allow ourselves to
be shocked by the results of our work of interpretation. I think we are not yet
quite adept at it; and above all there lies upon us the obligation to secure it
against certain attacks. It is not at all difficult to "find a hitch" in it. Our dream
interpretations were made on the hypotheses we accepted a little while ago, that
the dream has some meaning, that from the hypnotic to the normal sleep one
may carry over the idea of the existence at such times of an unconscious
psychic activity, and that all associations are predetermined. If we had come to
plausible results on the basis of these hypotheses, we would have been justified
in concluding that the hypotheses were correct. But what is to be done when the
results are what I have just pictured them to be? Then it surely is natural to say,
"These results are impossible, foolish, at least very improbable, hence there
must have been something wrong with the hypotheses. Either the dream is no
psychic phenomenon after all, or there is no such thing as unconscious mental
activity in the normal condition, or our technique has a gap in it somewhere. Is
that not a simpler and more satisfying conclusion than the abominations which
we pretend to have disclosed on the basis of our suppositions?"
Both, I answer. It is a simpler as well as a more satisfying conclusion, but not
necessarily more correct for that reason. Let us take our time, the matter is not
yet ripe for judgment. Above all we can strengthen the criticism against our
dream interpretation still further. That its conclusions are so unpleasant and
unpalatable is perhaps of secondary importance. A stronger argument is the fact
that the dreamers to whom we ascribe such wish-tendencies from the
interpretation of their dreams reject the interpretations most emphatically, and
with good reason. "What," says the one, "you want to prove to me by this
dream that I begrudged the sums which I spent for my sister's trousseau and my
brother's education? But indeed that can't be so. Why I work only for my sister,
I have no interest in life but to fulfill my duties toward her, as being the oldest
child, I promised our blessed mother I would." Or a woman says of her dream,
"You mean to say that I wish my husband were dead! Why, that is simply
revolting, nonsense. It isn't only that we have the happiest possible married life,
you probably won't believe me when I tell you so, but his death would deprive
me of everything else that I own in the world." Or another will tell us, "You
mean that I have sensual desires toward my sister? That is ridiculous. I am not
in the least fond of her. We don't get along and I haven't exchanged a word with
her in years." We might perhaps ignore this sort of thing if the dreamers did not
confirm or deny the tendencies ascribed to them; we could say that they are
matters which the dreamers do not know about themselves. But that the
dreamers should feel the exact opposite of the ascribed wish, and should be
able to prove to us the dominance of the opposite tendency—this fact must
finally disconcert us. Is it not time to lay aside the whole work of the dream
interpretation as something whose results reduce it to absurdity?
By no means; this stronger argument breaks down when we attack it
critically. Assuming that there are unconscious tendencies in the psychic life,
nothing is proved by the ability of the subject to show that their opposites
dominate his conscious life. Perhaps there is room in the psychic life even for
antithetical tendencies, for contradictions which exist side by side, yes, possibly
it is just the dominance of the one impulse which is the necessary condition for
the unconsciousness of its opposite. The first two objections raised against our
work hold merely that the results of dream interpretation are not simple, and
very unpleasant. In answer to the first of these, one may say that for all your
enthusiasm for the simple solution, you cannot thereby solve a single dream
problem. To do so you must make up your mind to accept the fact of
complicated relationships. And to the second of these objections one may say
that you are obviously wrong to use a preference or a dislike as the basis for a
scientific judgment. What difference does it make if the results of the dream
interpretation seem unpleasant, even embarrassing and disgusting to you? "That
doesn't prevent them from existing," as I used to hear my teacher Charcot say in
similar cases, when I was a young doctor. One must be humble, one must keep
personal preferences and antipathies in the background, if one wishes to
discover the realities of the world. If a physicist can prove to you that the
organic life of this planet must, within a short period of time, become
completely extinct, do you also venture to say to him, "That cannot be so. This
prospect is too unpleasant." On the contrary, you will be silent until another
physicist proves some error in the assumptions or calculations of the first. If
you reject the unpleasant, you are repeating the mechanism of dream
construction instead of understanding and mastering it.
Perhaps you will promise to overlook the repulsive character of the censored
dream-wishes, and will take refuge in the argument that it is improbable, after
all, that so wide a field be given over to the evil in the constitution of man. But
does your own experience justify you in saying that? I will not discuss the
question of how you may estimate yourselves, but have you found so much
good will among your superiors and rivals, so much chivalry among your
enemies, so little envy in their company, that you feel yourselves in duty bound
to enter a protest against the part played by the evil of egoism in human nature?
Are you ignorant of how uncontrolled and undependable the average human
being is in all the affairs of sex life? Or do you not know that all the
immoralities and excesses of which we dream nightly are crimes committed
daily by waking persons? What else does psychoanalysis do here but confirm
the old saying of Plato, that the good people are those who content themselves
with dreaming what the others, the bad people, really do?
And now turn your attention from the individual case to the great war
devastating Europe. Think of the amount of brutality, the cruelty and the lies
allowed to spread over the civilized world. Do you really believe that a handful
of conscienceless egoists and corruptionists could have succeeded in setting
free all these evil spirits, if the millions of followers did not share in the guilt?
Do you dare under these circumstances to break a lance for the absence of evil
from the psychic constitution of mankind?
You will reproach me with judging the war one-sidedly, you will say that it
has also brought forth all that is most beautiful and noble in mankind, its heroic
courage, its self-sacrifice, its social feeling. Certainly, but do not at this point
allow yourselves to become guilty of the injustice which has so often
been perpetrated against psychoanalysis, of reproaching it with denying one
thing because it was asserting another. It is not our intention to deny the noble
strivings of human nature, nor have we ever done anything to deprecate their
value. On the contrary, I show you not only the censored evil dream-wishes,
but also the censor which suppresses them and renders them unrecognizable.
We dwell on the evil in mankind with greater emphasis only because others
deny it, a method whereby the psychic life of mankind does not become better,
but merely incomprehensible. When, however, we give up this one-sided
ethical estimate, we shall surely be able to find a more accurate formula for the
relationship of the evil to the good in human nature.
And thus the matter stands. We need not give up the conclusions to which
our labors in dream interpretation lead us even though we must consider those
conclusions strange. Perhaps we can approach their understanding later by
another path. For the present, let us repeat: dream distortion is a consequence of
the censorship practised by accredited tendencies of the ego against those wish-
impulses that are in any way shocking, impulses which stir in us nightly during
sleep. Why these wish-impulses come just at night, and whence they come—
these are questions which will bear considerable investigation.
It would be a mistake, however, to omit to mention, with fitting emphasis,
another result of these investigations. The dream wishes which try to disturb
our sleep are not known to us, in fact we learn of them first through the dream
interpretation. Therefore, they may be described as "at that time" unconscious
in the sense above defined. But we can go beyond this and say that they are
more than merely "at that time" unconscious. The dreamer to be sure denies
their validity, as we have seen in so many cases, even after he has learned of
their existence by means of the interpretation. The situation is then repeated
which we first encountered in the interpretation of the tongue slip "hiccough"
where the toastmaster was outraged and assured us that neither then nor ever
before had he been conscious of disrespectful impulse toward his chief. This is
repeated with every interpretation of a markedly distorted dream, and for that
reason attains a significance for our conception. We are now prepared to
conclude that there are processes and tendencies in the psychic life of which
one knows nothing at all, has known nothing for some time, might, in fact,
perhaps never have known anything. The unconscious thus receives a new
meaning for us; the idea of "at present" or "at a specific time" disappears from
its conception, for it can also mean permanentlyunconscious, not merely latent
at the time. Obviously we shall have to learn more of this at another session.
 TENTH LECTURE

THE DREAM

Symbolism in the Dream

WE have discovered that the distortion of dreams, a disturbing element in

our work of understanding them, is the result of a censorious activity which is
directed against the unacceptable of the unconscious wish-impulses. But, of
course, we have not maintained that censorship is the only factor which is to
blame for the dream distortion, and we may actually make the discovery in a
further study of the dream that other items play a part in this result. That is,
even if the dream censorship were eliminated we might not be in a position to
understand the dreams; the actual dream still might not be identical with the
latent dream thought.
This other item which makes the dream unintelligible, this new addition to
dream distortion, we discover by considering a gap in our technique. I have
already admitted that for certain elements of the dream, no associations really
occur to the person being analyzed. This does not happen so often as the
dreamers maintain; in many cases the association can be forced by persistence.
But still there are certain instances in which no association is forthcoming, or if
forced does not furnish what we expected. When this happens in the course of a
psychoanalytic treatment, then a particular meaning may be attached thereto,
with which we have nothing to do here. It also occurs, however, in the
interpretation of the dreams of a normal person or in interpreting one's own
dreams. Once a person is convinced that in these cases no amount of forcing of
associations will avail, he will finally make the discovery that the unwished-for
contingency occurs regularly in certain dream elements, and he will begin to
recognize a new order of things there, where at first he believed he had come
across a peculiar exception to our technique.
In this way we are tempted to interpret these silent dream elements ourselves,
to undertake their translation by the means at hand. The fact that every time we
trust to this substitution we obtain a satisfactory meaning is forced upon us;
until we resolve upon this decision the dream remains meaningless, its
continuity is broken. The accumulation of many similar cases tends to give the
necessary certainty to our first timid attempts.
I am expounding all this in rather a schematic manner, but this is permissible
for purposes of instruction, and I am not trying to misstate, but only to simplify
matters.
In this manner we derive constant translations for a whole series of dream
elements just as constant translations are found in our popular dream books for
all the things we dream. But do not forget that in our association technique we
never discover constant substitutes for the dream elements.
You will say at once that this road to interpretation appears far more
uncertain and open to objection than the former methods of free association.
But a further fact is to be taken into consideration. After one has gathered a
sufficient number of such constant substitutes empirically, he will say that of
his own knowledge he should actually have denied that these items of dream
interpretation could really be understood without the associations of the
dreamer. The facts that force us to recognize their meaning will appear in the
second half of our analysis.
We call such a constant relationship between a dream element and its
interpretation symbolic. The dream element is itself a symbol of the
unconscious dream thought. You will remember that previously, when we were
investigating the relationship between dream elements and their actuality, I
drew three distinctions, viz., that of the part of the whole, that of the allusion,
and that of the imagery. I then announced that there was a fourth, but did not
name it. This fourth is the symbolic relationship here introduced. Very
interesting discussions center about this, and we will now consider them before
we express our own particular observations on symbolism. Symbolism is
perhaps the most noteworthy chapter of dream study.
In the first place, since symbols are permanent or constant translations, they
realize, in a certain measure, the ideal of ancient as well as popular dream
interpretation, an ideal which by means of our technique we had left behind.
They permit us in certain cases to interpret a dream without questioning the
dreamer who, aside from this, has no explanation for the symbol. If the
interpreter is acquainted with the customary dream symbols and, in addition,
with the dreamer himself, the conditions under which the latter lives and the
impressions he received before having the dream, it is often possible to
interpret a dream without further information—to translate it "right off the bat."
Such a trick flatters the interpreter and impresses the dreamer; it stands out as a
pleasurable incident in the usual arduous course of cross-examining the
dreamer. But do not be misled. It is not our function to perform tricks.
Interpretation based on a knowledge of symbols is not a technique that can
replace the associative technique, or even compare with it. It is a supplement to
the associative technique, and furnishes the latter merely with transplanted,
usable results. But as regards familiarity with the dreamer's psychic situation,
you must consider the fact that you are not limited to interpreting the dreams of
acquaintances; that as a rule you are not acquainted with the daily occurrences
which act as the stimuli for the dreams, and that the associations of the subject
furnish you with a knowledge of that very thing we call the psychic situation.
 Furthermore, it is very extraordinary, particularly in view of circumstances to
be mentioned later, that the most vehement opposition has been voiced against
the existence of the symbolic relationship between the dream and the
unconscious. Even persons of judgment and position, who have otherwise made
great progress in psychoanalysis, have discontinued their support at this point.
This is the more remarkable since, in the first place, symbolism is neither
peculiar to the dream nor characteristic of it, and since in the second place,
symbolism in the dream was not discovered through psychoanalysis, although
the latter is not poor otherwise in making startling discoveries. The discoverer
of dream symbolism, if we insist on a discovery in modern times, was the
philosopher K. A. Scherner (1861). Psychoanalysis affirmed Scherner's
discovery and modified it considerably.
Now you will want to know something of the nature of dream symbolism,
and to hear some examples. I shall gladly impart to you what I know, but I
admit that our knowledge is not so complete as we could desire it to be.
The nature of the symbol relationship is a comparison, but not any desired
comparison. One suspects a special prerequisite for this comparison, but is
unable to say what it is. Not everything to which we are able to compare an
object or an occurrence occurs in the dream as its symbol; on the other hand,
the dream does not symbolize anything we may choose, but only specific
elements of the dream thought. There are limitations on both sides. It must be
admitted that the idea of the symbol cannot be sharply delimited at all times—it
mingles with the substitution, dramatization, etc., even approaches the allusion.
In one series of symbols the basic comparison is apparent to the senses. On the
other hand, there are other symbols which raise the question of where the
similarity, the "something intermediate" of this suspected comparison is to be
sought. We may discover it by more careful consideration, or it may remain
hidden to us. Furthermore, it is extraordinary, if the symbol is a comparison,
that this comparison is not revealed by the association, that the dreamer is not
acquainted with the comparison, that he makes use of it without knowing of its
existence. Indeed, the dreamer does not even care to admit the validity of this
comparison when it is pointed out to him. So you see, a symbolic relationship is
a comparison of a very special kind, the origin of which is not yet clearly
understood by us. Perhaps later we may find references to this unknown factor.
The number of things that find symbolic representation in the dream is not
great—the human body as a whole, parents, children, brothers and sisters, birth,
death, nakedness and a few others. The only typical, that is, regular
representation of the human person as a whole is in the form of a house, as was
recognized by Scherner who, indeed, wished to credit this symbol with an
overwhelming significance which it does not deserve. It occurs in dreams that a
person, now lustful, now frightened, climbs down the fronts of houses. Those
with entirely smooth walls are men; but those which are provided with
projections and balconies to which one can hold on, are women. Parents appear
in the dream as king and queen, or other persons highly respected. The dream in
this instance is very pious. It treats children, and brothers and sisters, less
tenderly; they are symbolized as little animals or vermin. Birth is almost
regularly represented by some reference to water; either one plunges into the
water or climbs out of it, or rescues someone from the water, or is himself
rescued from it, i.e., there is a mother-relation to the person. Death is replaced
in the dream by taking a journey, riding in a train; being dead, by various
darksome, timid suggestions; nakedness, by clothes and uniforms. You see here
how the lines between symbolic and suggestive representation merge one into
another.
In contrast to the paucity of this enumeration, it is a striking fact that the
objects and subject matter of another sphere are represented by an
extraordinarily rich symbolism. This is the sphere of the sexual life, the
genitals, the sex processes and sexual intercourse. The great majority of
symbols in the dream are sex symbols. A remarkable disproportion results from
this fact. The designated subject matters are few, their symbols extraordinarily
profuse, so that each of these objects can be expressed by any number of
symbols of almost equal value. In the interpretation something is disclosed that
arouses universal objection. The symbol interpretations, in contrast to the
many-sidedness of the dream representations, are very monotonous—this
displeases all who deal with them; but what is one to do?
Since this is the first time in these lectures that we speak of the sexual life, I
must tell you the manner in which I intend to handle this theme. Psychoanalysis
sees no reason for hiding matters or treating them by innuendo, finds no
necessity of being ashamed of dealing with this important subject, believes it is
proper and decent to call everything by its correct name, and hopes most
effectively in this manner to ward off disturbing or salacious thoughts. The fact
that I am talking before a mixed audience can make no difference on this point.
Just as there is no special knowledge either for the Delphic oracle or for
flappers, so the ladies present among you have, by their appearance in this
lecture hall, made it clear that they wish to be considered on the same basis as
the men.
The dream has a number of representations for the male genital that may be
called symbolic, and in which the similarity of the comparison is, for the most
part, very enlightening. In the first place, the holy figure 3 is a symbolical
substitute for the entire male genital. The more conspicuous and more
interesting part of the genital to both sexes, the male organ, has symbolical
substitute in objects of like form, those which are long and upright, such
as sticks, umbrellas, poles, trees, etc. It is also symbolized by objects that have
the characteristic, in common with it, of penetration into the body and
consequent injury, hence pointed weapons of every
type, knives, daggers, lances,swords, and in the same
manner firearms, guns, pistols and the revolver, which is so suitable because of
its shape. In the troubled dream of the young girl, pursuit by a man with a knife
or a firearm plays a big role. This, probably the most frequent dream
symbolism, is easily translatable. Easily comprehensible, too, is the substitution
for the male member of objects out of which water flows: faucets, water
cans, fountains, as well as its representation by other objects that have the
power of elongation, such as hanging lamps, collapsible pencils, etc.
That pencils, quills, nail files, hammers and other instruments are undoubtedly
male symbols is a fact connected with a conception of the organ, which
likewise is not far to seek.
The extraordinary characteristic of the member of being able to raise itself
against the force of gravity, one of the phenomena of erection, leads to
symbolic representations by balloons, aeroplanes, and more
recently, Zeppelins. The dream has another far more expressive way of
symbolizing erection. It makes the sex organ the essential part of the whole
person and pictures the person himself as flying. Do not feel disturbed because
the dreams of flying, often so beautiful, and which we all have had, must be
interpreted as dreams of general sexual excitement, as erection dreams. P.
Federn, among the psychoanalytical students, has confirmed this interpretation
beyond any doubt, and even Mourly Vold, much praised for his sobriety, who
carried on his dream experiments with artificial positions of the arms and legs,
and who was really opposed to psychoanalysis—perhaps knew nothing about
psychoanalysis—has come to the same conclusion as a result of his research. It
is no objection to this conclusion that women may have the same dreams of
flying. Remember that our dreams act as wish-fulfillments, and that the wish to
be a man is often present in women, consciously or unconsciously. And the fact
that it is possible for a woman to realize this wish by the same sensation as a
man does, will not mislead anyone acquainted with anatomy. There is a small
organ in the genitals of a woman similar to that of the male, and this small
organ, the clitoris, even in childhood, and in the years before sexual
intercourse, plays the same role as does the large organ of the male.
To the less comprehensible male sex-symbols belong
certain reptiles and fish, notably the famous symbol of the snake.
Why hats and cloaks should have been turned to the same use is certainly
difficult to discover, but their symbolic meaning leaves no room for doubt. And
finally the question may be raised whether possibly the substitution of some
other member as a representation for the male organ may not be regarded as
symbolic. I believe that one is forced to this conclusion by the context and by
the female counterparts.
The female genital is symbolically represented by all those objects which
share its peculiarity of enclosing a space capable of being filled by something
—viz., by pits,caves, and hollows, by pitchers and bottles,
by boxes and trunks, jars, cases, pockets, etc. The ship, too, belongs in this
category. Many symbols represent the womb of the mother rather than the
female genital, as wardrobes, stoves, and primarily a room. The room-
symbolism is related to the house-symbol, doors and entrances again become
symbolic of the genital opening. But materials, too, are symbols of the woman
—wood, paper, and objects that are made of these materials, such
as tables and books. Of animals, at least the snail and mussel are unmistakably
recognizable as symbols for the female; of parts of the body the mouth takes the
place of the genital opening, whilechurches and chapels are structural
symbolisms. As you see, all of these symbols are not equally comprehensible.
The breasts must be included in the genitals, and like the larger hemispheres
of the female body are represented by apples, peaches and fruits in general.
The pubic hair growth of both sexes appears in the dream as woods and bushes.
The complicated topography of the female genitals accounts for the fact that
they are often represented as scenes with cliffs, woods and water, while the
imposing mechanism of the male sex apparatus leads to the use of all manner of
very complicated machinery, difficult to describe.
A noteworthy symbol of the female genital is also the jewel-
casket; jewels and treasure are also representatives of the beloved person in the
dream; sweets frequently occur as representatives of sexual delights. The
satisfaction in one's own genital is suggested by all types of play, in which may
be included piano-playing. Exquisite symbolic representations
of onanism are sliding and coasting as well as tearing off a branch. A
particularly remarkable dream symbol is that of having one's teeth fall out,
or having them pulled. Certainly its most immediate interpretation is castration
as a punishment for onanism. Special representations for the relations of the
sexes are less numerous in the dream than we might have expected from the
foregoing. Rhythmic activities, such as dancing, riding and climbing may be
mentioned, also harrowing experiences, such asbeing run over. One may
include certain manual activities, and, of course, being threatened with
weapons.
You must not imagine that either the use or the translation of these symbols
is entirely simple. All manner of unexpected things are continually happening.
For example, it seems hardly believable that in these symbolic representations
the sex differences are not always sharply distinguished. Many symbols
represent a genital in general, regardless of whether male or female, e.g.,
the little child, the small son or daughter. It sometimes occurs that a
predominantly male symbol is used for a female genital, or vice versa. This is
not understood until one has acquired an insight into the development of the
sexual representations of mankind. In many instances this double meaning of
symbols may be only apparent; the most striking of the symbols, such
as weapons, pockets and boxes are excluded from this bisexual usage.
I should now like to give a summary, from the point of view of the symbols
rather than of the thing represented, of the field out of which the sex symbols
are for the most part taken, and then to make a few remarks about the symbols
which have points in common that are not understood. An obscure symbol of
this type is the hat, perhaps headdress on the whole, and is usually employed as
a male representation, though at times as a female. In the same way
the cloak represents a man, perhaps not always the genital aspect. You are at
liberty to ask, why? The cravat, which is suspended and is not worn by women,
is an unmistakable male symbol. White laundry, all linen, in fact, is
female. Dresses, uniforms are, as we have already seen, substitutes for
nakedness, for body-formation; the shoe or slipper is a female
genital. Tables and wood have already been mentioned as puzzling but
undoubtedly female symbols. Ladders, ascents, steps in relation to their
mounting, are certainly symbols of sexual intercourse. On closer consideration
we see that they have the rhythm of walking as a common characteristic;
perhaps, too, the heightening of excitement and the shortening of the breath, the
higher one mounts.
We have already spoken of natural scenery as a representation of the female
genitals. Mountains and cliffs are symbols of the male organ; the garden a
frequent symbol of the female genitals. Fruit does not stand for the child, but
for the breasts. Wild animals signify sensually aroused persons, or further, base
impulses, passions. Blossoms andflowers represent the female genitals, or more
particularly, virginity. Do not forget that the blossoms are really the genitals of
the plants.
We already know the room as a symbol. The representation may be extended
in that the windows, entrances and exits of the room take on the meaning of the
body openings. Whether the room is open or closed is a part of this symbolism,
and the key that opens it is an unmistakable male symbol.
This is the material of dream symbolism. It is not complete and might be
deepened as well as extended. But I am of the opinion it will seem more than
enough to you, perhaps will make you reluctant. You will ask, "Do I really live
in the midst of sex symbols? Are all the objects that surround me, all the
clothes I put on, all the things that I touch, always sex symbols, and nothing
else?" There really are sufficient grounds for such questions, and the first is,
"Where, in fact, are we to find the meaning of these dream symbols if the
dreamer himself can give no information concerning them, or at best can give
only incomplete information?"
My answer is: "From many widely different sources, from fairy tales and
myths, jokes and farces, from folklore, that is, the knowledge of the customs,
usages, sayings and songs of peoples, from the poetic and vulgar language.
Everywhere we find the same symbolism and in many of these instances we
understand them without further information. If we follow up each of these
sources separately we shall find so many parallels to the dream symbolism that
we must believe in the correctness of our interpretations."
The human body, we have said, is, according to Scherner, frequently
symbolized in the dream by the house. Continuing this representation, the
windows, doors and entrances are the entrances into the body cavities, the
facades are smooth or provided with balconies and projections to which to
hold. The same symbolism is to be found in our daily speech when we greet a
good friend as "old house" or when we say of someone, "We'll hit him in
the belfry," or maintain of another that he's not quite right in theupper story. In
anatomy the body openings are sometimes called the body-portals.
The fact that we meet our parents in the dream as imperial or royal persons is
at first surprising. But it has its parallel in the fairy tale. Doesn't it begin to
dawn upon us that the many fairy tales which begin "Once upon a time there
was a king and a queen" intend nothing else than, "Once there was a father and
a mother?" In our families we refer to our children as princes, the eldest as
the crown-prince. The king usually calls himself the father of the country. We
playfully designate little children as worms, and say, sympathetically, "poor
little worm."
Let us return to the symbolism of the house. When we use the projections of
the house to hold ourselves on to in the dream, are we not reminded of the
familiar colloquialism about persons with well-developed breasts: "She has
something to hold onto"? The folk express this in still another way when it
says, "there's lots of wood in front of her house"; as though it wished to come to
the aid of our interpretation that wood is a feminine, maternal symbol.
In addition to wood there are others. We might not understand how this
material has come to be a substitute for the maternal, the feminine. Here our
comparison of languages may be helpful. The German word Holz (wood) is
said to be from the same stem as the Greek word, νλη, which means stuff, raw
material. This is an example of the case, not entirely unusual, where a general
word for material finally is exclusively used for some special material. There is
an island in the ocean, known by the name of Madeira. The Portuguese gave it
this name at the time of its discovery because it was at that time entirely
covered with forests, for in the language of the Portuguese, Madeira
means wood. You will recognize, however, that Madeira, is nothing else than
the slightly changed Latin word materia which again has the general meaning
of material Material is derived from mater, mother. The material out of which
something is made, is at the same time its mother-part. In the symbolic use of
wood for woman, mother, this ancient conception still lives.
Birth is regularly expressed in dreams by some connection with water; one
plunges into the water, or comes out of the water, which means one gives birth
to, or is born. Now let us not forget that this symbol may refer in two ways to
the truths of evolutionary history. Not alone have all land-mammals, including
the ancestors of man, developed out of water animals—this is the ultimate fact
—but every single mammal, every human being, lived the first part of his
existence in the water—namely, lived in the body of his mother as an embryo
in the amniotic fluid and came out of the water at the time of his birth. I do not
wish to maintain that the dreamer knows this, on the contrary I hold that he
does not have to know. The dreamer very likely knows some things because of
the fact that he was told about them in his childhood, and for that very reason I
maintain that this knowledge has played no part in the construction of his
symbols. He was told in childhood that the stork brought him—but where did it
get him? Out of a lake, out of the well—again, out of the water. One of my
patients to whom such information had been given, a little count, disappeared
for a whole afternoon. Finally he was discovered lying at the edge of the palace
lake, his little face bent above the water and earnestly peering into it to see if he
could not see the little children at the bottom.
In the myths of the birth of the hero, which O. Rank submitted to
comparative examination,—the oldest is that of King Sargon of Agade, about
2800 B.C.—exposure in the water and rescue from water play a predominating
role. Rank has recognized that these are representations of birth, analogous to
those customary in dreams. When a person in his dream rescues another from
the water, the latter becomes his mother, or just plainly mother; in the myth a
person who rescues a child out of the water professes herself as the real mother
of the child. In a well-known joke the intelligent Jewish boy is asked who was
the mother of Moses. He answered without hesitation, the Princess. But no, he
is told, she only took him out of the water. "That's what she says," is his reply,
and thereby he shows that he has found the correct interpretation of the myth.
Leaving on a trip represents death in the dream. Likewise it is the custom in
the nursery when a child asks where someone who has died, and whom he
misses, may be, to say to him that the absent one has taken a trip. Again I
should like to deny the truth of the belief that the dream symbol originates in
this evasion used for the benefit of children. The poet makes use of the same
symbol when he speaks of the Hereafter as "that undiscovered bourne from
which no traveler returns." Even in everyday speech it is customary to refer to
the last journey. Every person acquainted with ancient rite knows how
seriously, for example, the Egyptians considered the portrayal of a journey to
the land of the dead. There still exist many copies of the "death book" which
was given to the mummy for this journey as a sort of Baedeker. Since the burial
places have been separated from the living quarters, the last journey of the dead
person has become a reality.
In the same manner the genital symbolism is just as little peculiar to the
dream alone. Every one of you has perhaps at some time or other been so
unkind as to call some woman an "old casket" without perhaps being aware that
he was using a genital symbol. In the New Testament one may read "Woman is
a weak vessel." The Holy Scriptures of the Jews, so nearly poetic in their style,
are filled with sex-symbolic expressions which have not always been correctly
understood, and the true construction of which, in the Song of Songs, for
example, has led to many misunderstandings. In the later Hebraic literature the
representation of woman as a house, the door taking the place of the sex
opening, is very widespread. The man complains, for instance, when he
discovers a lack of virginity, that he has found the door open. The symbol of
the table for woman is also known to this literature. The woman says of her
husband, "I set the table for him, but he upset it." Lame children are supposed
to result from the fact that the man has overturned the table. I take these
examples from a work by L. Levy of Brünn, The Sexual Symbolism of the Bible
and the Talmud.
That ships, too, represent women in dreams is a belief derived from the
etymologists, who maintain "ship" was originally the name of an earthen vessel
and is the same word as Schaff (to create). The Greek myth of Periander of
Corinth and his wife Melissa is proof that the stove or oven is a woman, and a
womb. When, according to Herodotus, the tyrant entreated the shade of his
beloved wife, whom, however, he had murdered in a fit of jealousy, for some
sign of its identity, the deceased identified herself by the reminder that
he, Periander, had thrust his bread into a cold oven, as a disguise for an
occurrence that could have been known to no other person. In
theAnthropophyteia published by F. S. Krauss, an indispensable source book
for everything that has to do with the sex life of nations, we read that in a
certain German region it is commonly said of a woman who has just been
delivered of a child, "Her oven has caved in." The making of a fire and
everything connected therewith is filled through and through with sex
symbolism. The flame is always the male genital, the fireplace, the hearth, is
the womb of the woman.
If you have often wondered why it is that landscapes are so often used to
represent the female genitals in the dream, then let the mythologist teach you
the role Mother Earth has played in the symbolisms and cults of ancient times.
You may be tempted to say that a room represents a woman in the dream
because of the German colloquialism which uses the
term Frauenzimmer instead of Frau, in other words, it substitutes for the
human person the idea of that room that is set aside for her exclusive use. In
like manner we speak of the Sublime Porte, and mean the Sultan and his
government; furthermore, the name of the ancient Egyptian ruler, Pharaoh,
means nothing other than "great court room." (In the ancient Orient the court
yards between the double gates of the town were the gathering places of the
people, in the same manner as the market place was in the classical world.)
What I mean is, this derivation is far too superficial. It seems more probable to
me that the room, as the space surrounding man, came to be the symbol of
woman. We have seen that the house is used in such a representation; from
mythology and poetry we may take the city, fortress, palace, citadel, as further
symbols of woman. The question may easily be decided by the dreams of those
persons who do not speak German and do not understand it. In the last few
years my patients have been predominantly foreign-language speaking, and I
think I can recall that in their dreams as well the room represents woman, even
where they had no analogous usages in their languages. There are still other
signs which show that the symbolization is not limited by the bounds of
language, a fact that even the old dream investigator, Schubert (1862)
maintained. Since none of my dreamers were totally ignorant of German I must
leave this differentiation to those psychoanalysts who can gather examples in
other lands where the people speak but one language.
Among the symbol-representations of the male genital there is scarcely one
that does not recur in jokes or in vulgar or poetical usage, especially among the
old classical poets. Not alone do those symbols commonly met with in dreams
appeal here, but also new ones, e.g., the working materials of various
performances, foremost of which is the incantation. Furthermore, we approach
in the symbolic representation of the male a very extended and much discussed
province, which we shall avoid for economic reasons. I should like to make a
few remarks, however, about one of the unclassified symbols—the figure 3.
Whether or not this figure derives its holiness from its symbolic meaning may
remain undecided. But it appears certain that many objects which occur in
nature as three-part things derive their use as coats-of-arms and emblems from
such symbolic meaning, e.g., the clover, likewise the three-part French lily,
(fleur-de-lys), and the extraordinary coats-of-arms of two such widely
separated islands as Sicily and the Isle of Man, where the Triskeles (three partly
bended knees, emerging from a central point) are merely said to be the
portrayal in a different form of the male genitals. Copies of the male member
were used in antiquity as the most powerful charms (Apotropaea) against evil
influences, and this is connected with the fact that the lucky amulets of our own
time may one and all be recognized as genital or sex-symbols. Let us study
such a collection, worn in the form of little silver pendants: the four-leaf clover,
a pig, a mushroom, a horse-shoe, a ladder, a chimney-sweep. The four-leaf
clover, it seems, has usurped the place of the three-leaf clover, which is really
more suitable as a symbol; the pig is an ancient symbol of fertility; the
mushroom is an unquestionable penis symbol—there are mushrooms that
derive their systematic names from their unmistakable similarity to the male
member (Phallus impudicus); the horseshoe recalls the contour of the female
genital opening; and the chimney sweep who carries a ladder belongs in this
company because he carries on that trade with which the sex-intercourse is
vulgarly compared (cf. the Anthropophyteia). We have already become
acquainted with his ladder as a sex symbol in the dream; the German usage is
helpful here, it shows us how the verb "to mount"[30] is made use of in an
exquisite sexual sense. We use the expressions "to run after women," which
literally translated would be "to climb after women," and "an old
climber."[31] In French, where "step" is "la marche" we find that the analogous
expression for a man about town is "un vieux marcheur." It is apparently not
unknown in this connection that the sexual intercourse of many of the larger
animals requires a mounting, a climbing upon the female.
The tearing off of a branch as the symbolic representation of onanism is not
alone in keeping with the vulgar representation of the fact of onanism, but has
far-reaching mythological parallels. Especially noteworthy, however, is the
representation of onanism, or rather the punishment therefor, castration, by the
falling out or pulling out of teeth, because there is a parallel in folk-lore which
is probably known to the fewest dreamers. It does not seem at all questionable
to me that the practice of circumcision common among so many peoples is an
equivalent and a substitute for castration. And now we are informed that in
Australia certain primitive tribes practice circumcision as a rite of puberty (the
ceremony in honor of the boy's coming of age), while others, living quite near,
have substituted for this act the striking out of a tooth.
I end my exposition with these examples. They are only examples. We know
more about these matters, and you may well imagine how much richer and how
much more interesting such a collection would appear if made, not by amateurs
like ourselves, but by real experts in mythology, anthropology, philology and
folk-lore. We are compelled to draw a few conclusions which cannot be
exhaustive, but which give us much food for thought.
In the first place, we are faced by the fact that the dreamer has at his disposal
a symbolic means of expression of which he is unconscious while awake, and
does not recognize when he sees. That is as remarkable as if you should make
the discovery that your chambermaid understands Sanskrit, although you know
she was born in a Bohemian village and never learned the language. It is not
easy to harmonize this fact with our psychological views. We can only say that
the dreamer's knowledge of symbolism is unconscious, that it is a part of his
unconscious mental life. We make no progress with this assumption. Until now
it was only necessary to admit of unconscious impulses, those about which one
knew nothing, either for a period of time or at all times. But now we deal with
something more; indeed, with unknown knowledge, with thought relationships,
comparisons between unlike objects which lead to this, that one constant may
be substituted for another. These comparisons are not made anew each time,
but they lie ready, they are complete for all time. That is to be concluded from
the fact of their agreement in different persons, agreement despite differences
in language.
But whence comes the knowledge of these symbol-relationships? The usages
of language cover only a small part of them. The dreamer is for the most part
unacquainted with the numerous parallels from other sources; we ourselves
must first laboriously gather them together.
Secondly, these symbolic representations are peculiar neither to the dreamer
nor to the dream work by means of which they become expressed. We have
learned that mythology and fairy-tales make use of the same symbolism, as
well as do the people in their sayings and songs, the ordinary language of every
day, and poetic phantasy. The field of symbolism is an extraordinarily large
one, and dream symbolism is but a small part thereof. It is not even expedient
to approach the whole problem from the dream side. Many of the symbols that
are used in other places do not occur in the dream at all, or at best only very
seldom. Many of the dream symbols are to be found in other fields only very
rarely, as you have seen. One gets the impression that he is here confronted
with an ancient but no longer existent method of expression, of which various
phases, however, continue in different fields, one here, one there, a third,
perhaps in a slightly altered form, in several fields. I am reminded of the
phantasy of an interesting mental defective, who had imagined a fundamental
language, of which all these symbolic representations were the remains.
Thirdly, you must have noticed that symbolism in these other fields is by no
means sex symbolism solely, while in the dream the symbols are used almost
entirely to express sexual objects and processes. Nor is this easily explained. Is
it possible that symbols originally sexual in their meaning later came to have
other uses, and that this was the reason perhaps for the weakening of the
symbolic representation to one of another nature? These questions are
admittedly unanswerable if one has dealt only with dream-symbolism. One can
only adhere to the supposition that there is an especially intimate connection
between true symbols and things sexual.
An important indication of this has been given us recently. A philologist, H.
Sperber (Upsala) who works independently of psychoanalysis, advanced the
theory that sexual needs have played the largest part in the origin and
development of languages. The first sounds served as means of communication,
and called the sexual partner; the further development of the roots of speech
accompanied the performance of the primitive man's work. This work was
communal and progressed to the accompaniment of rhythmically repeated word
sounds. In that way a sexual interest was transferred to the work. The primitive
man made work acceptable at the same time that he used it as an equivalent and
substitute for sex-activity. The word thus called forth by the common labor had
two meanings, designating the sex-act as well as the equivalent labor-activity.
In time the word became disassociated from its sexual significance and became
fixed on this work. Generations later the same thing happened to a new word
that once had sexual significance and came to be used for a new type of work.
In this manner a number of word-roots were formed, all of sexual origin, and
all of which had lost their sexual significance. If the description sketched here
approximates the truth, it opens up the possibility for an understanding of the
dream symbolism. We can understand how it is that in the dream, which
preserves something of these most ancient conditions, there are so
extraordinarily many symbols for the sexual, and why, in general, weapons and
implements always stand for the male, materials and things manufactured, for
the female. Symbolic relationships would be the remnants of the old word-
identity; things which once were called by the same names as the genitals can
now appear in the dream as symbols for them.
From our parallels to dream symbolization you may also learn to appreciate
what is the character of psychoanalysis which makes it a subject of general
interest, which is true of neither psychology nor psychiatry. Psychoanalytic
work connects with so many other scientific subjects, the investigation of
which promises the most pertinent discoveries, with mythology, with folk-lore,
with racial psychology and with religion. You will understand how a journal
can have grown on psychoanalytic soil, the sole purpose of which is the
furtherance of these relationships. This is the Imago founded in 1912 and edited
by Hanns Sachs and Otto Rank. In all of these relations, psychoanalysis is first
and foremost the giving, less often the receiving, part. Indeed it derives benefit
from the fact that its unusual teachings are substantiated by their recurrence in
other fields, but on the whole it is psychoanalysis that provides the technical
procedure and the point of view, the use of which will prove fruitful in those
other fields. The psychic life of the human individual provides us, upon
psychoanalytic investigation, with explanations with which we are able to solve
many riddles in the life of humanity, or at least show these riddles in their
proper light.
Furthermore, I have not even told you under what conditions we are able to
get the deepest insight into that suppositious "fundamental language," or from
which field we gain the most information. So long as you do not know this you
cannot appreciate the entire significance of the subject. This field is the
neurotic, its materials, the symptoms and other expressions of the nervous
patient, for the explanation and treatment of which psychoanalysis was devised.
My fourth point of view returns to our premise and connects up with our
prescribed course. We said, even if there were no such thing as dream
censorship, the dream would still be hard to understand, for we would then be
confronted with the task of translating the symbol-language of the dream into
the thought of our waking hours. Symbolism is a second and independent item
of dream distortion, in addition to dream censorship. It is not a far cry to
suppose that it is convenient for the dream censorship to make use of
symbolism since both lead to the same end, to making the dream strange and
incomprehensible.
Whether or not in the further study of the dream we shall hit upon a new item
that influences dream distortion, remains to be seen. I should not like to leave
the subject of dream symbolism without once more touching upon the curious
fact that it arouses such strong opposition in the case of educated persons, in
spite of the fact that symbolism in myth, religion, art and speech is undoubtedly
so prevalent. Is not this again because of its relationship to sexuality?

ELEVENTH LECTURE

THE DREAM

The Dream-Work

IF you have mastered dream censorship and symbolic representation, you are,
to be sure, not yet adept in dream distortion, but you are nevertheless in a
position to understand most dreams. For this you employ two mutually
supplementary methods, call up the associations of the dreamer until you have
penetrated from the substitute to the actual, and from your own knowledge
supply the meaning for the symbol. Later we shall discuss certain uncertainties
which show themselves in this process.
We are now in a position to resume work which we attempted, with very
insufficient means at an earlier stage, when we studied the relation between the
manifest dream elements and their latent actualities, and in so doing established
four such main relationships: that of a part of the whole, that of approach or
allusion, the symbolic relationship and plastic word representation. We shall
now attempt the same on a larger scale, by comparing the manifest dream
content as a whole, with the latent dream which we found by interpretation.
I hope you will never again confuse these two. If you have achieved this, you
have probably accomplished more in the understanding of the dream than the
majority of the readers of my Interpretation of Dreams. Let me remind you
once more that this process, which changes the latent into the manifest dream,
is called dream-work. Work which proceeds in the opposite direction, from the
manifest dream to the latent, is our work of interpretation. The work of
interpretation attempts to undo the dream-work. Infantile dreams that are
recognized as evident wish fulfillments nevertheless have undergone some
dream-work, namely, the transformation of the wish into reality, and generally,
too, of thoughts into visual pictures. Here we need no interpretation, but only a
retracing of these transformations. Whatever dream-work has been added to
other dreams, we calldream distortion, and this can be annulled by our work of
interpretation.
The comparison of many dream interpretations has rendered it possible for
me to give you a coherent representation of what the dream-work does with the
material of the latent dream. I beg of you, however, not to expect to understand
too much of this. It is a piece of description that should be listened to with calm
attention.
The first process of the dream-work is condensation. By this we understand
that the manifest dream has a smaller content than the latent one, that is, it is a
sort of abbreviated translation of the latter. Condensation may occasionally be
absent, but as a rule it is present, often to a very high degree. The opposite is
never true, that is, it never occurs that the manifest dream is more extensive in
scope and content than the latent. Condensation occurs in the following ways:
1. Certain latent elements are entirely omitted; 2. only a fragment of the many
complexes of the latent dream is carried over into the manifest dream; 3. latent
elements that have something in common are collected for the manifest dream
and are fused into a whole.
If you wish, you may reserve the term "condensation" for this last process
alone. Its effects are particularly easy to demonstrate. From your own dreams
you will doubtless recall the fusion of several persons into one. Such a
compound person probably looks like A., is dressed like B., does something
that one remembers of C., but in spite of this one is conscious that he is really
D. By means of this compound formation something common to all four people
is especially emphasized. One can make a compound formation of events and
of places in the same way as of people, provided always that the single events
and localities have something in common which the latent dream emphasizes. It
is a sort of new and fleeting concept of formation, with the common element as
its kernel. This jumble of details that has been fused together regularly results
in a vague indistinct picture, as though you had taken several pictures on the
same film.
The shaping of such compound formations must be of great importance to
the dream-work, for we can prove, (by the choice of a verbal expression for a
thought, for instance) that the common elements mentioned above are
purposely manufactured where they originally do not exist. We have already
become acquainted with such condensation and compound formations; they
played an important part in the origin of certain cases of slips of the tongue.
You recall the young man who wished to inscort a woman. Furthermore, there
are jokes whose technique may be traced to such a condensation. But entirely
aside from this, one may maintain that this appearance of something quite
unknown in the dream finds its counterpart in many of the creations of our
imagination which fuse together component parts that do not belong together in
experience, as for example the centaurs, and the fabulous animals of old
mythology or of Boecklin's pictures. For creative imagination can invent
nothing new whatsoever, it can only put together certain details normally alien
to one another. The peculiar thing, however, about the procedure of the dream-
work is the following: The material at the disposal of the dream-work consists
of thoughts, thoughts which may be offensive and unacceptable, but which are
nevertheless correctly formed and expressed. These thoughts are transformed
into something else by the dream-work, and it is remarkable and
incomprehensible that this translation, this rendering, as it were, into another
script or language, employs the methods of condensation and combination. For
a translation usually strives to respect the discriminations expressed in the text,
and to differentiate similar things. The dream-work, on the contrary, tries to
fuse two different thoughts by looking, just as the joke does, for an ambiguous
word which shall act as a connecting link between the two thoughts. One need
not attempt to understand this feature of the case at once, but it may become
significant for the conception of the dream-work.
Although condensation renders the dream opaque, one does not get the
impression that it is an effect of dream censorship. One prefers to trace it back
to mechanical or economic conditions; but censorship undoubtedly has a share
in the process.
The results of condensation may be quite extraordinary. With its help, it
becomes possible at times to collect quite unrelated latent thought processes
into one manifest dream, so that one can arrive at an apparently adequate
interpretation, and at the same time conceive a possible further interpretation.
The consequence of condensation for the relation between latent and
manifest dreams is the fact that no simple relations can exist between the
elements of the one and the other. A manifest element corresponds
simultaneously to several latent ones, and vice versa, a latent element may
partake of several manifest ones, an interlacing, as it were. In the interpretation
of the dream it also becomes evident that the associations to a single element do
not necessarily follow one another in orderly sequence. Often we must wait
until the entire dream is interpreted.
Dream-work therefore accomplishes a very unusual sort of transcription of
dream thoughts, not a translation word for word, or sign for sign, not a
selection according to a set rule, as if all the consonants of a word were given
and the vowels omitted; nor is it what we might call substitution, namely, the
choice of one element to take the place of several others. It is something very
different and much more complicated.
The second process of the dream-work is displacement. Fortunately we are
already prepared for this, since we know that it is entirely the work of dream
censorship. The two evidences of this are firstly, that a latent element is not
replaced by one of its constituent parts but by something further removed from
it, that is, by a sort of allusion; secondly, that the psychic accent is transferred
from an important element to another that is unimportant, so that the dream
centers elsewhere and seems strange.
Substitution by allusion is known to our conscious thinking also, but with a
difference. In conscious thinking the allusion must be easily intelligible, and
the substitute must bear a relation to the actual content. Jokes, too, often make
use of allusion; they let the condition of content associations slide and replace it
by unusual external associations, such as resemblances in sound, ambiguity of
words, etc. They retain, however, the condition of intelligibility; the joke would
lose all its effect if the allusion could not be traced back to the actual without
any effort whatsoever. The allusion of displacement has freed itself of both
these limitations. Its connection with the element which it replaces is most
external and remote, is unintelligible for this reason, and if it is retraced, its
interpretation gives the impression of an unsuccessful joke or of a forced, far-
fetched explanation. For the dream censor has only then accomplished its
purpose, when it has made the path of return from the allusion to the original
undiscoverable.
The displacement of emphasis is unheard of as a means of expressing
thoughts. In conscious thinking we occasionally admit it to gain a comic effect.
I can probably give you an idea of the confusion which this produces by
reminding you of the story of the blacksmith who had committed a capital
crime. The court decided that the penalty for the crime must be paid, but since
he was the only blacksmith in the village and therefore indispensable, while
there were three tailors, one of the latter was hung in his stead.
The third process of the dream-work is the most interesting from a
psychological point of view. It consists of the translation of thoughts into
visual images. Let us bear in mind that by no means all dream thoughts
undergo this translation; many of them retain their form and appear in the
manifest dream also as thought or consciousness; moreover, visual images are
not the only form into which thoughts are translated. They are, however, the
foundation of the dream fabric; this part of the dream work is, as we already
know, the second most constant, and for single dream elements we have
already learned to know "plastic word representation."
It is evident that this process is not simple. In order to get an idea of its
difficulties you must pretend that you have undertaken the task of replacing a
political editorial in a newspaper by a series of illustrations, that you have
suffered an atavistic return from the use of the alphabet to ideographic writing.
Whatever persons or concrete events occur in this article you will be able to
replace easily by pictures, perhaps to your advantage, but you will meet with
difficulties in the representation of all abstract words and all parts of speech
denoting thought relationships, such as particles, conjunctions, etc. With the
abstract words you could use all sorts of artifices. You will, for instance, try to
change the text of the article into different words which may sound unusual, but
whose components will be more concrete and more adapted to representation.
You will then recall that most abstract words were concrete before their
meaning paled, and will therefore go back to the original concrete significance
of these words as often as possible, and so you will be glad to learn that you
can represent the "possession" of an object by the actual physical straddling of
it.[32] The dream work does the same thing. Under such circumstances you can
hardly demand accuracy of representation. You will also have to allow the
dream-work to replace an element that is as hard to depict as for instance,
broken faith, by another kind of rupture, a broken leg.[33] In this way you will
be able to smooth away to some extent the crudity of imagery when the latter is
endeavoring to replace word expression.
In the representation of parts of speech that denote thought relations, such
as because, therefore, but, etc., you have no such aids; these constituent parts
of the text will therefore be lost in your translation into images. In the same
way, the dream-work resolves the content of the dream thought into its
raw material of objects and activities. You may be satisfied if the possibility is
vouchsafed you to suggest certain relations, not representable in themselves, in
a more detailed elaboration of the image. In quite the same way the dream-
work succeeds in expressing much of the content of the latent dream thought in
the formal peculiarities of the manifest dream, in its clearness or vagueness, in
its division into several parts, etc. The number of fragmentary dreams into
which the dream is divided corresponds as a rule to the number of main themes,
of thought sequences in the latent dream; a short preliminary dream often
stands as an introduction or a motivation to the complementary dream which
follows; a subordinate clause in dream thought is represented in the manifest
dream as an interpolated change of scene, etc. The form of the dream is itself,
therefore, by no means without significance and challenges interpretation.
Different dreams of the same night often have the same meaning, and testify to
an increasing effort to control a stimulus of growing urgency. In a single dream
a particularly troublesome element may be represented by "duplicates," that is,
by numerous symbols.
By continually comparing dream thought with the manifest dream that
replaces it, we learn all sorts of things for which we were not prepared, as for
instance, the fact that even the nonsense and absurdity of the dream have
meaning. Yes, on this point the opposition between the medical and
psychoanalytic conception of the dream reaches a climax not previously
achieved. According to the former, the dream is senseless because the dreaming
psychic activity has lost all power of critical judgment; according to our theory,
on the other hand, the dream becomes senseless, whenever a critical judgment,
contained in the dream thought, wishes to express the opinion: "It is nonsense."
The dream which you all know, about the visit to the theatre (three tickets 1 Fl.
50 Kr.) is a good example of this. The opinion expressed here is: "It
was nonsense to marry so early."
In the same way, we discover in interpretation what is the significance of the
doubts and uncertainties so often expressed by the dreamer as to whether a
certain element really occurred in the dream; whether it was this or something
else. As a rule these doubts and uncertainties correspond to nothing in the latent
dream thought; they are occasioned throughout by the working of the dream
censor and are equivalent to an unsuccessful attempt at suppression.
One of the most surprising discoveries is the manner in which the dream-
work deals with those things which are opposed to one another in the latent
dream. We already know that agreements in the latent material are expressed in
the manifest dream by condensations. Now oppositions are treated in exactly
the same way as agreements and are, with special preference, expressed by the
same manifest element. An element in a manifest dream, capable of having an
opposite, may therefore represent itself as well as its opposite, or may do both
simultaneously; only the context can determine which translation is to be
chosen. It must follow from this that the particle "no" cannot be represented in
the dream, at least not unambiguously.
The development of languages furnishes us with a welcome analogy for this
surprising behavior on the part of the dream work. Many scholars who do
research work in languages have maintained that in the oldest languages
opposites—such as strong, weak; light, dark; big, little—were expressed by the
same root word. (The Contradictory Sense of Primitive Words.) In old
Egyptian, ken originally meant both strong and weak. In conversation,
misunderstanding in the use of such ambiguous words was avoided by the tone
of voice and by accompanying gestures, in writing by the addition of so-called
determinatives, that is, by a picture that was itself not meant to be expressed.
Accordingly, if ken meant strong, the picture of an erect little man was placed
after the alphabetical signs, if ken, weak, was meant, the picture of a cowering
man followed. Only later, by slight modifications of the original word, were
two designations developed for the opposites which it denoted. In this way,
from ken meaning both strong and weak, there was derived a ken, strong, and
a ken, weak. It is said that not only the most primitive languages in their last
developmental stage, but also the more recent ones, even the living tongues of
to-day have retained abundant remains of this primitive opposite meaning. Let
me give you a few illustrations of this taken from C. Abel (1884).
In Latin there are still such words of double meaning:
altus—high, deep, and sacer, sacred, accursed.
As examples of modifications of the same root, I cite:
clamare—to scream, clam—quiet, still, secret;
siccus—dry, succus—juice.
And from the German:
Stimme—voice, stumm—dumb.
The comparison of related tongues yields a wealth of examples:
English: lock; German: Loch—hole, Lücke—gap.
English: cleave; German: kleben—to stick, to adhere.
The English without, is to-day used to mean "not with"; that "with" had the
connotation of deprivation as well as that of apportioning, is apparent from the
compounds:withdraw, withhold. The German wieder, again, closely resembles
this.
Another peculiarity of dream-work finds it prototype in the development of
language. It occurred in ancient Egyptian as well as in other later languages that
the sequence of sounds of the words was transposed to denote the same
fundamental idea. The following are examples from English and German:
Topf—pot; boat—tub; hurry—Ruhe (rest, quiet).
Balken (beam)—Kloben (mallet)—club.
From the Latin and the German:
capere (to seize)—packen (to seize, to grasp).
Inversions such as occur here in the single word are effected in a very
different way by the dream-work. We already know the inversion of the sense,
substitution by the opposite. Besides there are inversions of situations, of
relations between two people, and so in dreams we are in a sort of topsy-turvy
world. In a dream it is frequently the rabbit that shoots the hunter. Further
inversion occurs in the sequence of events, so that in the dream the cause is
placed after the effect. It is like a performance in a third-rate theatre, where the
hero falls before the shot which kills him is fired from the wings. Or there are
dreams in which the whole sequence of the elements is inverted, so that in the
interpretation one must take the last first, and the first last, in order to obtain a
meaning. You will recall from our study of dream symbolism that to go or fall
into the water means the same as to come out of it, namely, to give birth to, or
to be born, and that mounting stairs or a ladder means the same as going down.
The advantage that dream distortions may gain from such freedom of
representation, is unmistakable.
These features of the dream-work may be called archaic. They are connected
with ancient systems of expression, ancient languages and literatures, and
involve the same difficulties which we shall deal with later in a critical
connection.
Now for some other aspects of the matter. In the dream-work it is plainly a
question of translating the latent thoughts, expressed in words, into psychic
images, in the main, of a visual kind. Now our thoughts were developed from
such psychic images; their first material and the steps which led up to them
were psychic impressions, or to be more exact, the memory images of these
psychic impressions. Only later were words attached to these and then
combined into thoughts. The dream-work therefore puts the thoughts through
a regressive treatment, that is, one that retraces the steps in their development.
In this regression, all that has been added to the thoughts as a new contribution
in the course of the development of the memory pictures must fall away.
This, then, is the dream-work. In view of the processes that we have
discovered about it, our interest in the manifest dream was forced into the
background. I shall, however, devote a few remarks to the latter, since it is after
all the only thing that is positively known to us.
It is natural that the manifest dream should lose its importance for us. It must
be a matter of indifference to us whether it is well composed or resolved into a
series of disconnected single images. Even when its exterior seems to be
significant, we know that it has been developed by means of dream distortion
and may have as little organic connection with the inner content of the dream as
the facade of an Italian church has with its structure and ground plan. At other
times this facade of the dream, too, has its significance, in that it reproduces
with little or no distortion an important part of the latent dream thought. But we
cannot know this before we have put the dream through a process of
interpretation and reached a decision as to what amount of distortion has taken
place. A similar doubt prevails when two elements in the dream seem to have
been brought into close relations to one another. This may be a valuable hint,
suggesting that we may join together those manifest thoughts which correspond
to the elements in the latent dream; yet at other times we are convinced that
what belongs together in thought has been torn apart in the dream.
As a general rule we must refrain from trying to explain one part of the
manifest dream by another, as if the dream were coherently conceived and
pragmatically represented. At the most it is comparable to a Breccian stone,
produced by the fusion of various minerals in such a way that the markings it
shows are entirely different from those of the original mineral constituents.
There is actually a part of the dream-work, the so-called secondary treatment,
whose function it is to develop something unified, something approximately
coherent from the final products of the dream-work. In so doing the material is
often arranged in an entirely misleading sense and insertions are made
wherever it seems necessary.
On the other hand, we must not over-estimate the dream-work, nor attribute
too much to it. The processes which we have enumerated tell the full tale of its
functioning; beyond condensing, displacing, representing plastically, and then
subjecting the whole to a secondary treatment, it can do nothing. Whatever of
judgment, of criticism, of surprise, and of deduction are to be found in the
dream are not products of the dream-work and are only very seldom signs of
afterthoughts about the dream, but are generally parts of the latent dream
thought, which have passed over into the manifest dream, more or less
modified and adapted to the context. In the matter of composing speeches, the
dream-work can also do nothing. Except for a few examples, the speeches in
the dream are imitations and combinations of speeches heard or made by
oneself during the day, and which have been introduced into the latent thought,
either as material or as stimuli for the dream. Neither can the dream pose
problems; when these are found in the dream, they are in the main
combinations of numbers, semblances of examples that are quite absurd or
merely copies of problems in the latent dream thought. Under these conditions
it is not surprising that the interest which has attached itself to the dream-work
is soon deflected from it to the latent dream thoughts which are revealed in
more or less distorted form in the manifest dream. It is not justifiable, however,
to have this change go so far that in a theoretical consideration one regularly
substitutes the latent dream thought for the dream itself, and maintains of the
latter what can hold only for the former. It is odd that the results of
psychoanalysis should be misused for such an exchange. "Dream" can mean
nothing but the result of the dream-work, that is, the form into which the latent
dream thoughts have been translated by the dream-work.
Dream-work is a process of a very peculiar sort, the like of which has
hitherto not been discovered in psychic life. These condensations,
displacements, regressive translations of thoughts into pictures, are new
discoveries which richly repay our efforts in the field of psychoanalysis. You
will realize from the parallel to the dream-work, what connections
psychoanalytic studies will reveal with other fields, especially with the
development of speech and thought. You can only surmise the further
significance of these connections when you hear that the mechanism of the
dream structure is the model for the origin of neurotic symptoms.
I know too that we cannot as yet estimate the entire contribution that this
work has made to psychology. We shall only indicate the new proofs that have
been given of the existence of unconscious psychic acts—for such are the latent
dream thoughts—and the unexpectedly wide approach to the understanding of
the unconscious psychic life that dream interpretation opens up to us.
The time has probably come, however, to illustrate separately, by various
little examples of dreams, the connected facts for which you have been
prepared.

TWELFTH LECTURE

THE DREAM

Analysis of Sample Dreams

IHOPE you will not be disappointed if I again lay before you excerpts from
dream analyses instead of inviting you to participate in the interpretation of a
beautiful long dream. You will say that after so much preparation you ought to
have this right, and that after the successful interpretation of so many thousands
of dreams it should long ago have become possible to assemble a collection of
excellent dream samples with which we could demonstrate all our assertions
concerning dream-work and dream thoughts. Yes, but the difficulties which
stand in the way of the fulfillment of your wish are too many.
First of all, I must confess to you that no one practices dream interpretation
as his main occupation. When does one interpret dreams? Occasionally one can
occupy himself with the dream of some friend, without any special purpose, or
else he may work with his own dreams for a time in order to school himself in
psychoanalytic method; most often, however, one deals with the dreams of
nervous individuals who are undergoing analytic treatment. These latter dreams
are excellent material, and in no way inferior to those of normal persons, but
one is forced by the technique of the treatment to subordinate dream analysis to
therapeutic aims and to pass over a large number of dreams after having
derived something from them that is of use in the treatment. Many dreams we
meet with during the treatment are, as a matter of fact, impossible of complete
analysis. Since they spring from the total mass of psychic material which is still
unknown to us, their understanding becomes possible only after the completion
of the cure. Besides, to tell you such dreams would necessitate the disclosure of
all the secrets concerning a neurosis. That will not do for us, since we have
taken the dream as preparation for the study of the neuroses.
I know you would gladly leave this material, and would prefer to hear the
dreams of healthy persons, or your own dreams explained. But that is
impossible because of the content of these dreams. One can expose neither
himself, nor another whose confidence he has won, so inconsiderately as would
result from a thorough interpretation of his dreams—which, as you already
know, refer to the most intimate things of his personality. In addition to this
difficulty, caused by the nature of the material, there is another that must be
considered when communicating a dream. You know the dream seems strange
even to the dreamer himself, let alone to one who does not know the dreamer.
Our literature is not poor in good and detailed dream analyses. I myself have
published some in connection with case histories. Perhaps the best example of a
dream interpretation is the one published by O. Rank, being two related dreams
of a young girl, covering about two pages of print, the analysis covering
seventy-six pages. I would need about a whole semester in order to take you
through such a task. If we select a longer or more markedly distorted dream, we
have to make so many explanations, we must make use of so many free
associations and recollections, must go into so many bypaths, that a lecture on
the subject would be entirely unsatisfactory and inconclusive. So I must ask
you to be content with what is more easily obtained, with the recital of small
bits of dreams of neurotic persons, in which we may be able to recognize this or
that isolated fact. Dream symbols are the most easily demonstrable, and after
them, certain peculiarities of regressive dream representations.[34] I shall tell
you why I considered each of the following dreams worthy of communication.
1. A dream, consisting of only two brief pictures: "The dreamer's uncle is
smoking a cigarette, although it is Saturday. A woman caresses him as though
he were her child."
In commenting on the first picture, the dreamer (a Jew) remarks that his
uncle is a pious man who never did, and never would do, anything so sinful as
smoking on the Sabbath. As to the woman of the second picture, he has no free
associations other than his mother. These two pictures or thoughts
should obviously be brought into connection with each other, but how? Since
he expressly rules out the reality of his uncle's action, then it is natural to
interpolate an "if." "If my uncle, that pious man, should smoke a cigarette on
Saturday, then I could also permit my mother's caresses." This obviously means
that the mother's caresses are prohibited, in the same manner as is smoking on
Saturday, to a pious Jew. You will recall, I told you that all relations between
the dream thoughts disappear in the dream-work, that these relations are broken
up into their raw material, and that it is the task of interpretation to re-
interpolate the omitted connections.
2. Through my publications on dreams I have become, in certain respects, the
public consultant on matters pertaining to dreams, and for many years I have
been receiving communications from the most varied sources, in which dreams
are related to me or presented to me for my judgment. I am of course grateful to
all those persons who include with the story of the dream, enough material to
make an interpretation possible, or who give such an interpretation themselves.
It is in this category that the following dream belongs, the dream of a Munich
physician in the year 1910. I select it because it goes to show how impossible
of understanding a dream generally is before the dreamer has given us what
information he has about it. I suspect that at bottom you consider the ideal
dream interpretation that in which one simply inserts the meaning of the
symbols, and would like to lay aside the technique of free association to the
dream elements. I wish to disabuse your minds of this harmful error.
"On July 13, 1910, toward morning, I dreamed that I was bicycling down a
street in Tübingen, when a brown Dachshund tore after me and caught me by
the heel. A bit further on I get off, seat myself on a step, and begin to beat the
beast, which has clenched its teeth tight. (I feel no discomfort from the biting or
the whole scene.) Two elderly ladies are sitting opposite me and watching me
with grins on their faces. Then I wake up and, as so often happens to me, the
whole dream becomes perfectly clear to me in this moment of transition to the
waking state."
Symbols are of little use in this case. The dreamer, however, informs us, "I
lately fell in love with a girl, just from seeing her on the street, but had no
means of becoming acquainted with her. The most pleasant means might have
been the Dachshund, since I am a great lover of animals, and also felt that the
girl was in sympathy with this characteristic." He also adds that he repeatedly
interfered in the fights of scuffling dogs with great dexterity and frequently to
the great amazement of the spectators. Thus we learn that the girl, who pleased
him, was always accompanied by this particular dog. This girl, however, was
disregarded in the manifest dream, and there remained only the dog which he
associates with her. Perhaps the elderly ladies who simpered at him took the
place of the girl. The remainder of what he tells us is not enough to explain this
point. Riding a bicycle in the dream is a direct repetition of the remembered
situation. He had never met the girl with the dog except when he was on his
bicycle.
3. When anyone has lost a loved one, he produces dreams of a special sort for
a long time afterward, dreams in which the knowledge of death enters into the
most remarkable compromises with the desire to have the deceased alive again.
At one time the deceased is dead and yet continues to live on because he does
not know that he is dead, and would die completely only if he knew it; at
another time he is half dead and half alive, and each of these conditions has its
particular signs. One cannot simply label these dreams nonsense, for to come to
life again is no more impossible in the dream than, for example, it is in the fairy
story, in which it occurs as a very frequent fate. As far as I have been able to
analyze such dreams, I have always found them to be capable of a sensible
solution, but that the pious wish to recall the deceased to life goes about
expressing itself by the oddest methods. Let me tell you such a dream, which
seems queer and senseless enough, and analysis of which will show you many
of the points for which you have been prepared by our theoretical discussions.
The dream is that of a man who had lost his father many years previously.
"Father is dead, but has been exhumed and looks badly. He goes on living,
and the dreamer does everything to prevent him from noticing that fact." Then
the dream goes on to other things, apparently irrelevant.
The father is dead, that we know. That he was exhumed is not really true, nor
is the truth of the rest of the dream important. But the dreamer tells us that
when he came back from his father's funeral, one of his teeth began to ache. He
wanted to treat this tooth according to the Jewish precept, "If thy tooth offend
thee, pluck it out," and betook himself to the dentist. But the latter said, "One
does not simply pull a tooth out, one must have patience with it. I shall inject
something to kill the nerve. Come again in three days and then I will take it
out."
"This 'taking it out'," says the dreamer suddenly, "is the exhuming."
Is the dreamer right? It does not correspond exactly, only approximately, for
the tooth is not taken out, but something that has died off is taken out of it. But
after our other experiences we are probably safe in believing that the dream
work is capable of such inaccuracies. It appears that the dreamer condensed,
fused into one, his dead father and the tooth that was killed but retained. No
wonder then, that in the manifest dream something senseless results, for it is
impossible for everything that is said of the tooth to fit the father. What is it
that serves as something intermediate between tooth and father and makes this
condensation possible?
This interpretation must be correct, however, for the dreamer says that he is
acquainted with the saying that when one dreams of losing a tooth it means that
one is going to lose a member of his family.
We know that this popular interpretation is incorrect, or at least is correct
only in a scurrilous sense. For that reason it is all the more surprising to find
this theme thus touched upon in the background of other portions of the dream
content.
 Without any further urging, the dreamer now begins to tell of his father's
illness and death as well as of his relations with him. The father was sick a long
time, and his care and treatment cost him, the son, much money. And yet it was
never too much for him, he never grew impatient, never wished it might end
soon. He boasts of his true Jewish piety toward his father, of rigid adherence to
the Jewish precepts. But are you not struck by a contradiction in the thoughts of
the dream? He had identified tooth with father. As to the tooth he wanted to
follow the Jewish precept that carries out its own judgment, "pull it out if it
causes pain and annoyance." He had also been anxious to follow the precept of
the law with regard to his father, which in this case, however, tells him to
disregard trouble and expense, to take all the burdens upon himself and to let
no hostile intent arise toward the object which causes the pain. Would not the
agreement be far more compelling if he had really developed feelings toward
his father similar to those about his sick tooth; that is, had he wished that a
speedy death should put an end to that superfluous, painful and expensive
existence?
I do not doubt that this was really his attitude toward his father during the
latter's extended illness, and that his boastful assurances of filial piety were
intended to distract his attention from these recollections. Under such
circumstances, the death-wish directed toward the parent generally becomes
active, and disguises itself in phrases of sympathetic consideration such as, "It
would really be a blessed release for him." But note well that we have here
overcome an obstacle in the latent dream thoughts themselves. The first part of
these thoughts was surely unconscious only temporarily, that is to say, during
the dream-work, while the inimical feelings toward the father might have been
permanently unconscious, dating perhaps from childhood, occasionally slipping
into consciousness, shyly and in disguise, during his father's illness. We can
assert this with even greater certainty of other latent thoughts which have made
unmistakable contributions to the dream content. To be sure, none of these
inimical feelings toward the father can be discovered in the dream. But when
we search a childhood history for the root of such enmity toward the father, we
recollect that fear of the father arises because the latter, even in the earliest
years, opposes the boy's sex activities, just as he is ordinarily forced to oppose
them again, after puberty, for social motives. This relation to the father applies
also to our dreamer; there had been mixed with his love for him much respect
and fear, having its source in early sex intimidation.
From the onanism complex we can now explain the other parts of the
manifest dream. "He looks badly" does, to be sure, allude to another remark of
the dentist, that it looks badly to have a tooth missing in that place; but at the
same time it refers to the "looking badly" by which the young man betrayed, or
feared to betray, his excessive sexual activity during puberty. It was not without
lightening his own heart that the dreamer transposed the bad looks from himself
to his father in the manifest content, an inversion of the dream work with which
you are familiar. "He goes on living since then," disguises itself with the wish
to have him alive again as well as with the promise of the dentist that the tooth
will be preserved. A very subtle phrase, however, is the following: "The
dreamer does everything to prevent him (the father) from noticing the fact," a
phrase calculated to lead us to conclude that he is dead. Yet the only
meaningful conclusion is again drawn from the onanism complex, where it is a
matter of course for the young man to do everything in order to hide his sex life
from his father. Remember, in conclusion, that we were constantly forced to
interpret the so-called tooth-ache dreams as dreams dealing with the subject of
onanism and the punishment that is feared.
You now see how this incomprehensible dream came into being, by the
creation of a remarkable and misleading condensation, by the fact that all the
ideas emerge from the midst of the latent thought process, and by the creation
of ambiguous substitute formations for the most hidden and, at the time, most
remote of these thoughts.
4. We have tried repeatedly to understand those prosaic and banal dreams
which have nothing foolish or repulsive about them, but which cause us to ask:
"Why do we dream such unimportant stuff?" So I shall give you a new example
of this kind, three dreams belonging together, all of which were dreamed in the
same night by a young woman.
(a). "She it going through the hall of her house and strikes her head against
the low-hanging chandelier, so that her head bleeds."
She has no reminiscence to contribute, nothing that really happened. The
information she gives leads in quite another direction. "You know how badly
my hair is falling out. Mother said to me yesterday, 'My child, if it goes on like
this, you will have a head like the cheek of a buttock.'" Thus the head here
stands for the other part of the body. We can understand the chandelier
symbolically without other help; all objects that can be lengthened are symbols
of the male organ. Thus the dream deals with a bleeding at the lower end of the
body, which results from its collision with the male organ. This might still be
ambiguous; her further associations show that it has to do with her belief that
menstrual bleeding results from sexual intercourse with a man, a bit of sexual
theory believed by many immature girls.
(b). "She sees a deep hole in the vineyard which she knows was made by
pulling out a tree." Herewith her remark that "she misses the tree." She means
that she did not see the tree in the dream, but the same phrase serves to express
another thought which symbolic interpretation makes completely certain. The
dream deals with another bit of the infantile sex theory, namely, with the belief
that girls originally had the same genitals as boys and that the later
conformation resulted from castration (pulling out of a tree).
(c). "She is standing in front of the drawer of her writing table, with which
she is so familiar that she knows immediately if anybody has been through it."
The writing-table drawer, like every drawer, chest, or box, stands for the female
genital. She knows that one can recognize from the genital the signs of sexual
intercourse (and, as she thinks, even of any contact at all) and she has long been
afraid of such a conviction. I believe that the accent in all these dreams is to be
laid upon the idea of knowing. She is reminded of the time of her childish
sexual investigations, the results of which made her quite proud at the time.
5. Again a little bit of symbolism. But this time I must first describe the
psychic situation in a short preface. A man who spent the night with a woman
describes his partner as one of those motherly natures whose desire for a child
irresistibly breaks through during intercourse. The circumstances of their
meeting, however, necessitated a precaution whereby the fertilizing discharge
of semen is kept away from the womb. Upon awaking after this night, the
woman tells the following dream:
"An officer with a red cap follows her on the street. She flees from him, runs
up the staircase, and he follows after her. Breathlessly she reaches her
apartment and slams and locks the door behind her. He remains outside and as
she looks through a peephole she sees him sitting outside on a bench and
weeping."
You undoubtedly recognize in the pursuit by an officer with a red cap, and
the breathless stair climbing, the representation of the sexual act. The fact that
the dreamer locks herself in against the pursuer may serve as an example of that
inversion which is so frequently used in dreams, for in reality it was the man
who withdrew before the completion of the act. In the same way her grief has
been transposed to the partner, it is he who weeps in the dream, whereby the
discharge of the semen is also indicated.
You must surely have heard that in psychoanalysis it is always maintained
that all dreams have a sexual meaning. Now you yourselves are in a position to
form a judgment as to the incorrectness of this reproach. You have become
acquainted with the wish-fulfillment dreams, which deal with the satisfying of
the plainest needs, of hunger, of thirst, of longing for freedom, the dreams of
convenience and of impatience and likewise the purely covetous and egoistic
dreams. But that the markedly distorted dreams preponderantly—though again
not exclusively—give expression to sex wishes, is a fact you may certainly
keep in mind as one of the results of psychoanalytical research.
6. I have a special motive for piling up examples of the use of symbols in
dreams. At our first meeting I complained of how hard it is, when lecturing on
psychoanalysis, to demonstrate the facts in order to awaken conviction; and you
very probably have come to agree with me since then. But the various
assertions of psychoanalysis are so closely linked that one's conviction can
easily extend from one point to a larger part of the whole. We might say of
psychoanalysis that if we give it our little finger it promptly demands the whole
hand. Anyone who was convinced by the explanation of errors can no longer
logically disbelieve in all the rest of psychoanalysis. A second equally
accessible point of approach is furnished by dream symbolism. I shall give you
a dream, already published, of a peasant woman, whose husband is a watchman
and who has certainly never heard anything about dream symbolism and
psychoanalysis. You may then judge for yourselves whether its explanation
with the help of sex symbols can be called arbitrary and forced.
"Then someone broke into her house and she called in fright for a watchman.
But the latter had gone companionably into a church together with two
'beauties.' A number of steps led up to the church. Behind the church was a
hill, and on its crest a thick forest. The watchman was fitted out with a helmet,
gorget and a cloak. He had a full brown beard. The two were going along
peacefully with the watchman, had sack-like aprons bound around their hips.
There was a path from the church to the hill. This was overgrown on both sides
with grass and underbrush that kept getting thicker and that became a regular
forest on the crest of the hill."
You will recognize the symbols without any difficulty. The male genital is
represented by a trinity of persons, the female by a landscape with a chapel, hill
and forest. Again you encounter steps as the symbol of the sexual act. That
which is called a hill in the dream has the same name in anatomy,
namely, mons veneris, the mount of Venus.
7. I have another dream which can be solved by means of inserting symbols,
a dream that is remarkable and convincing because the dreamer himself
translated all the symbols, even though he had had no preliminary knowledge
of dream interpretation. This situation is very unusual and the conditions
essential to its occurrence are not clearly known.
"He is going for a walk with his father in some place which must be the
Prater,[35] for one can see the rotunda and before it a smaller building to
which is anchored a captive balloon, which, however, seems fairly slack. His
father asks him what all that is for; he wonders at it himself but explains it to
his father. Then they come to a courtyard in which there lies spread out a big
sheet of metal. His father wants to break off a big piece of it for himself but
first looks about him to see if anyone might see him. He says to him that all he
needs to do is to tell the inspector and then he can take some without more ado.
There are steps leading from this courtyard down into a pit, the walls of which
are upholstered with some soft material rather like a leather arm chair. At the
end of this pit is a longish platform and then a new pit begins...."
The dreamer himself interprets as follows: "The rotunda is my genital, the
balloon in front of it is my penis, of whose slackness I have been complaining."
Thus one may translate in more detail, that the rotunda is the posterior—a part
of the body which the child regularly considers as part of the genital—while the
smaller building before it is the scrotum. In the dream his father asks him what
all that is for; that is to say, he asks the object and function of the genitals. It is
easy to turn this situation around so that the dreamer is the one who does
the asking. Since no such questioning of the father ever took place in real life,
we must think of the thought of this dream as a wish or consider it in the light
of a supposition, "If I had asked father for sexual enlightenment." We will find
the continuation of this idea in another place shortly.
The courtyard, in which the sheet metal lies spread out, is not to be
considered primarily as symbolical but refers to the father's place of business.
For reasons of discretion I have substituted the "sheet metal" for another
material with which the father deals, without changing anything in the literal
wording of the dream. The dreamer entered his father's business and took great
offense at the rather dubious practices upon which the profits depended to a
large extent. For this reason the continuation of the above idea of the dream
might be expressed as "if I had asked him, he would only have deceived me as
he deceives his customers." The dreamer himself gives us the second meaning
of "breaking off the metal," which serves to represent the commercial
dishonesty. He says it means masturbation. Not only have we long since
become familiar with this symbol, but the fact also is in agreement. The secrecy
of masturbation is expressed by means of its opposite—"It can be safely done
openly." Again our expectations are fulfilled by the fact that masturbatory
activity is referred to as the father's, just as the questioning was in the first
scene of the dream. Upon being questioned he immediately gives the
interpretation of the pit as the vagina on account of the soft upholstering of its
walls. I will add arbitrarily that the "going down" like the more usual "going
up" is meant to describe the sexual intercourse in the vagina.
Such details as the fact that the first pit ends in a platform and then a new one
begins, he explains himself as having been taken from his own history. He
practiced intercourse for a while, then gave it up on account of inhibitions, and
now hopes to be able to resume it as a result of the treatment.
8. The two following dreams are those of a foreigner, of very polygamous
tendencies, and I give them to you as proof for the claim that one's ego appears
in every dream, even in those in which it is disguised in the manifest content.
The trunks in the dream are a symbol for woman.
 (a). "He is to take a trip, his luggage is placed on a carriage to be taken to
the station, and there are many trunks piled up, among which are two big black
ones like sample trunks. He says, consolingly, to someone, 'Well, they are only
going as far as the station with us.'"
In reality he does travel with a great deal of luggage, but he also brings many
tales of women with him when he comes for treatment. The two black trunks
stand for two dark women who play the chief part in his life at present. One of
them wanted to travel to Vienna after him, but he telegraphed her not to, upon
my advice.
(b). A scene at the customs house: "A fellow traveler opens his trunk and
says indifferently while puffing a cigarette, 'There's nothing in here.' The
customs official seems to believe him but delves into the trunk once more and
finds something particularly forbidden. The traveler then says resignedly,
'Well, there's no help for it.'"
He himself is the traveler, I the customs official. Though otherwise very
frank in his confessions, he has on this occasion tried to conceal from me a new
relationship which he had struck up with a lady whom he was justified in
believing that I knew. The painful situation of being convicted of this is
transposed into a strange person so that he himself apparently is not present in
the dream.
9. The following is an example of a symbol which I have not yet mentioned:
"He meets his sister in company with two friends who are themselves sisters.
He extends his hand to both of them but not to his sister."
This is no allusion to a real occurrence. His thoughts instead lead him back to
a time when his observations made him wonder why a girl's breasts develop so
late. The two sisters, therefore, are the breasts. He would have liked to touch
them if only it had not been his sister.
10. Let me add an example of a symbol of death in a dream:
"He is walking with two persons whose name he knows but has forgotten. By
the time he is awake, over a very high, steep iron bridge. Suddenly the two
people are gone and he sees a ghostly man with a cap, and clad in white. He
asks this man whether he is the telegraph messenger.... No. Or is he a
coachman? No. Then he goes on," and even in the dream he is in great fear.
After waking he continues the dream by a phantasy in which the iron bridge
suddenly breaks, and he plunges into the abyss.
When the dreamer emphasizes the fact that certain individuals in a dream are
unknown, that he has forgotten their names, they are generally persons standing
in very close relationship to the dreamer. This dreamer has two sisters; if it be
true, as his dream indicates, that he wished these two dead, then it would only
be justice if the fear of death fell upon him for so doing. In connection with the
telegraph messenger he remarks that such people always bring bad news.
Judged by his uniform he might also have been the lamp-lighter, who, however,
also extinguishes the lamps—in other words, as the spirit of death extinguishes
the flame of life. The coachman reminds him of Uhland's poem of King Karl's
ocean voyage and also of a dangerous lake trip with two companions in which
he played the role of the king in the poem. In connection with the iron bridge
he remembers a recent accident and the stupid saying "Life is a suspension
bridge."
11. The following may serve as another example of the representation of
death in a dream: "An unknown man leaves a black bordered visiting card for
him."
12. The following dream will interest you for several reasons, though it is
one arising from a neurotic condition among other things:
"He is traveling in a train. The train stops in an open field. He thinks it
means that there is going to be an accident, that he must save himself, and he
goes through all the compartments of the train and strikes dead everyone
whom he meets, conductors, engine drivers, etc."
In connection with this he tells a story that one of his friends told him. An
insane man was being transported in a private compartment in a certain place in
Italy, but through some mistake another traveler was put in the same
compartment. The insane man murdered his fellow passenger. Thus he
identifies himself with this insane person and bases his right so to do upon a
compulsive idea which was then torturing him, namely, he must "do away with
all persons who knew of his failings." But then he himself finds a better
motivation which gave rise to the dream. The day before, in the theatre, he
again saw the girl whom he had expected to marry but whom he had left
because she had given him cause for jealousy. With a capacity for intense
jealousy such as he has, he would really be insane if he married. In other words,
he considers her so untrustworthy that out of jealousy he would have to strike
dead all the persons who stood in his way. Going through a series of rooms, of
compartments in this case, we have already learned to recognize as the symbol
of marriage (the opposite of monogamy).
In connection with the train stopping in the open country and his fear of an
accident, he tells the following: Once, when he was traveling in a train and it
came to a sudden stop outside of a station, a young lady in the compartment
remarked that perhaps there was going to be a collision, and that in that case the
best precaution would be to pull one's legs up. But this "legs up" had also
played a role in the many walks and excursions into the open which he had
taken with the girl in that happy period in their first love. Thus it is a new
argument for the idea that he would have to be crazy in order to marry her now.
But from my knowledge of the situation I can assume with certainty that the
wish to be as crazy as that nevertheless exists in him.

THIRTEENTH LECTURE

THE DREAM

Archaic Remnants and Infantilism in the Dream

LET us revert to our conclusion that the dream-work, under the influence of
the dream censorship, transforms the latent dream thoughts into some other
form of expression. The latent thoughts are no other than the conscious
thoughts known to us in our waking hours; the new mode of expression is
incomprehensible to us because of its many-sided features. We have said it
extends back to conditions of our intellectual development which we have long
progressed beyond, to the language of pictures, the symbol-representations,
perhaps to those conditions which were in force before the development of our
language of thought. So we called the mode of expression of the dream-work
the archaic or regressive.
You may conclude that as a result of the deeper study of the dream-work we
gain valuable information about the rather unknown beginnings of our
intellectual development. I trust this will be true, but this work has not, up to
the present time, been undertaken. The antiquity into which the dream-work
carries us back is of a double aspect, firstly, the individual antiquity, childhood;
and, secondly (in so far as every individual in his childhood lives over again in
some more or less abbreviated manner the entire development of the human
race), also this antiquity, the philogenetic. That we shall be able to differentiate
which part of the latent psychic proceeding has its source in the individual, and
which part in the philogenetic antiquity is not improbable. In this connection it
appears to me, for example, that the symbolic relations which the individual has
never learned are ground for the belief that they should be regarded as a
philogenetic inheritance.
However, this is not the only archaic characteristic of the dream. You
probably all know from your own experiences the peculiar amnesia, that is, loss
of memory, concerning childhood. I mean the fact that the first years, to the
fifth, sixth or eighth, have not left the same traces in our memory as have later
experiences. One meets with individual persons, to be sure, who can boast of a
continuous memory from the very beginning to the present day, but the other
condition, that of a gap in the memory, is far more frequent. I believe we have
not laid enough stress on this fact. The child is able to speak well at the age of
two, it soon shows that it can become adjusted to the most complicated psychic
situations, and makes remarks which years later are retold to it, but which it has
itself entirely forgotten. Besides, the memory in the early years is more facile,
because it is less burdened than in later years. Nor is there any reason for
considering the memory-function as a particularly high or difficult psychic
performance; in fact, the contrary is true, and you can find a good memory in
persons who stand very low intellectually.
As a second peculiarity closely related to the first, I must point out that
certain well-preserved memories, for the most part formatively experienced,
stand forth in this memory-void which surrounds the first years of childhood
and do not justify this hypothesis. Our memory deals selectively with its later
materials, with impressions which come to us in later life. It retains the
important and discards the unimportant. This is not true of the retained
childhood memories. They do not bespeak necessarily important experiences of
childhood, not even such as from the viewpoint of the child need appear of
importance. They are often so banal and intrinsically so meaningless that we
ask ourselves in wonder why just these details have escaped being forgotten. I
once endeavored to approach the riddle of childhood amnesia and the
interrupted memory remnants with the help of analysis, and I arrived at the
conclusion that in the case of the child, too, only the important has remained in
the memory, except that by means of the process of condensation already
known to you, and especially by means of distortion, the important is
represented in the memory by something that appears unimportant. For this
reason I have called these childhood memories "disguise-memories,"
memories used to conceal; by means of careful analysis one is able to develop
out of them everything that is forgotten.
In psychoanalytic treatment we are regularly called upon to fill out the
infantile memory gaps, and in so far as the cure is to any degree successful, we
are able again to bring to light the content of the childhood years thus clouded
in forgetfulness. These impressions have never really been forgotten, they have
only been inaccessible, latent, have belonged to the unconscious. But
sometimes they bob up out of the unconscious spontaneously, and, as a matter
of fact, this is what happens in dreams. It is apparent that the dream life knows
how to find the entrance to these latent, infantile experiences. Beautiful
examples of this occur in literature, and I myself can present such an example. I
once dreamed in a certain connection of a person who must have performed
some service for me, and whom I clearly saw. He was a one-eyed man, short in
stature, stout, his head deeply sunk into his neck. I concluded from the content
that he was a physician. Luckily I was able to ask my mother, who was still
living, how the physician in my birth-place, which I left when I was three years
old, looked, and I learned from her that he had one eye, was short and stout,
with his head sunk into his neck, and also learned at what forgotten mishap he
had been of service to me. This control over the forgotten material of childhood
years is, then, a further archaic tendency of the dream.
The same information may be made use of in another of the puzzles that have
presented themselves to us. You will recall how astonished people were when
we came to the conclusion that the stimuli which gave rise to dreams were
extremely bad and licentious sexual desires which have made dream-censorship
and dream-distortion necessary. After we have interpreted such a dream for the
dreamer and he, in the most favorable circumstances does not attack the
interpretation itself, he almost always asks the question whence such a wish
comes, since it seems foreign to him and he feels conscious of just the opposite
sensations. We need not hesitate to point out this origin. These evil wish-
impulses have their origin in the past, often in a past which is not too far away.
It can be shown that at one time they were known and conscious, even if they
no longer are so. The woman, whose dream is interpreted to mean that she
would like to see her seventeen-year old daughter dead, discovers under our
guidance that she in fact at one time entertained this wish. The child is the fruit
of an unhappy marriage, which early ended in a separation. Once, while the
child was still in the womb, and after a tense scene with her husband, she beat
her body with her fists in a fit of anger, in order to kill the child. How many
mothers who to-day love their children tenderly, perhaps too tenderly, received
them unwillingly, and at the time wished that the life within them would not
develop further; indeed, translated this wish into various actions, happily
harmless. The later death-wish against some loved one, which seems so
strange, also has its origin in early phases of the relationship to that person.
The father, the interpretation of whose dream shows that he wishes for the
death of his eldest and favorite child, must be reminded of the fact that at one
time this wish was no stranger to him. While the child was still a suckling, this
man, who was unhappy in his choice of a wife, often thought that if the little
being that meant nothing to him would die, he would again be free, and would
make better use of his freedom. A like origin may be found for a large number
of similar hate impulses; they are recollections of something that belonged to
the past, were once conscious and played their parts in the psychic life. You
will wish to conclude therefrom that such wishes and such dreams cannot occur
if such changes in the relationship to a person have not taken place; if such
relationship was always of the same character. I am ready to admit this, only
wish to warn you that you are to take into consideration not the exact terms of
the dream, but the meaning thereof according to its interpretation. It may
happen that the manifest dream of the death of some loved person has only
made use of some frightful mask, that it really means something entirely
different, or that the loved person serves as a concealing substitute for some
other.
But the same circumstances will call forth another, more difficult question.
You say: "Granted this death wish was present at some time or other, and is
substantiated by memory, yet this is no explanation. It is long outlived, to-day it
can be present only in the unconscious and as an empty, emotionless memory,
but not as a strong impulse. Why should it be recalled by the dream at all!" This
question is justified. The attempt to answer it would lead us far afield and
necessitate taking up a position in one of the most important points of dream
study. But I must remain within the bounds of our discussion and practice
restraint. Prepare yourselves for the temporary abstention. Let us be satisfied
with the circumstantial proof that this outlived wish can be shown to act as a
dream stimulator and let us continue the investigation to see whether or not
other evil wishes admit of the same derivation out of the past.
Let us continue with the removal or death-wish which most frequently can be
traced back to the unbounded egoism of the dreamer. Such a wish can very
often be shown to be the inciting cause of the dream. As often as someone has
been in our way in life—and how often must this happen in the complicated
relationships of life—the dream is ready to do away with him, be he father,
mother, brother, sister, spouse, etc. We have wondered sufficiently over this
evil tendency of human nature, and certainly were not predisposed to accept the
authenticity of this result of dream interpretation without question. After it has
once been suggested to us to seek the origin of such wishes in the past, we
disclose immediately the period of the individual past in which such egoism
and such wish-impulses, even as directed against those closest to the dreamer,
are no longer strangers. It is just in these first years of childhood which later are
hidden by amnesia, that this egoism frequently shows itself in most extreme
form, and from which regular but clear tendencies thereto, or real remnants
thereof, show themselves. For the child loves itself first, and later learns to love
others, to sacrifice something of its ego for another. Even those persons whom
the child seems to love from the very beginning, it loves at the outset because it
has need of them, cannot do without them, in others words, out of egoistical
motives. Not until later does the love impulse become independent of
egoism. In brief, egoism has taught the child to love.
In this connection it is instructive to compare the child's regard for his
brothers and sisters with that which he has for his parents. The little child does
not necessarily love his brothers and sisters, often, obviously, he does not love
them at all. There is no doubt that in them he hates his rivals and it is known
how frequently this attitude continues for many years until maturity, and even
beyond, without interruption. Often enough this attitude is superseded by a
more tender feeling, or rather let us say glossed over, but the hostile feeling
appears regularly to have been the earlier. It is most noticeable in children of
from two and one-half to four or five years of age, when a new little brother or
sister arrives. The latter is usually received in a far from friendly manner.
Expressions such as "I don't want him! Let the stork take him away again," are
very usual. Subsequently every opportunity is made use of to disparage the new
arrival, and even attempts to do him bodily harm, direct attacks, are not
unheard of. If the difference in age is less, the child learns of the existence of
the rival with intense psychic activity, and accommodates himself to the new
situation. If the difference in age is greater, the new child may awaken certain
sympathies as an interesting object, as a sort of living doll, and if the difference
is eight years or more, motherly impulses, especially in the case of girls, may
come into play. But to be truthful, when we disclose in a dream the wish for the
death of a mother or sister we need seldom find it puzzling and may trace its
origin easily to early childhood, often enough, also, to the propinquity of later
years.
Probably no nurseries are free from mighty conflicts among the inhabitants.
The motives are rivalry for the love of the parents, articles owned in common,
the room itself. The hostile impulses are called forth by older as well as
younger brothers and sisters. I believe it was Bernard Shaw who said: "If there
is anyone who hates a young English lady more than does her mother, it is her
elder sister." There is something about this saying, however, that arouses our
antipathy. We can, at a pinch, understand hatred of brothers and sisters, and
rivalry among them, but how may feelings of hatred force their way into the
relationship between daughter and mother, parents and children?
This relationship is without doubt the more favorable, even when looked at
from the viewpoint of the child. This is in accord with our expectation; we find
it much more offensive for love between parents and children to be lacking
than for love between brothers and sisters. We have, so to speak, made
something holy in the first instance which in the other case we permitted to
remain profane. But daily observation can show us how frequently the feelings
between parents and their grown children fail to come up to the ideal
established by society, how much enmity exists and would find expression did
not accumulations of piety and of tender impulse hold them back. The motives
for this are everywhere known and disclose a tendency to separate those of the
same sex, daughter from mother, father from son. The daughter finds in her
mother the authority that hems in her will and that is entrusted with the task of
causing her to carry out the abstention from sexual liberty which society
demands; in certain cases also she is the rival who objects to being displaced.
The same type of thing occurs in a more glaring manner between father and
son. To the son the father is the embodiment of every social restriction, borne
with such great opposition; the father bars the way to freedom of will, to early
sexual satisfaction, and where there is family property held in common, to the
enjoyment thereof. Impatient waiting for the death of the father grows to
heights approximating tragedy in the case of a successor to the throne. Less
strained is the relationship between father and daughter, mother and son. The
latter affords the purest examples of an unalterable tenderness, in no way
disturbed by egoistical considerations.
Why do I speak of these things, so banal and so well known? Because there
is an unmistakable disposition to deny their significance in life, and to set forth
the ideal demanded by society as a fulfilled thing much oftener than it really is
fulfilled. But it is preferable for psychology to speak the truth, rather than that
this task should be left to the cynic. In any event, this denial refers only to
actual life. The arts of narrative and dramatic poetry are still free to make use of
the motives that result from a disturbance of this ideal.
It is not to be wondered at that in the case of a large number of people the
dream discloses the wish for the removal of the parents, especially the parent of
the same sex. We may conclude that it is also present during waking hours, and
that it becomes conscious even at times when it is able to mask itself behind
another motive, as in the case of the dreamer's sympathy for his father's
unnecessary sufferings in example 3. It is seldom that the enmity alone controls
the relationship; much more often it recedes behind more tender impulses, by
which it is suppressed, and must wait until a dream isolates it. That which the
dream shows us in enlarged form as a result of such isolation, shrinks together
again after it has been properly docketed in its relation to life as a result of our
interpretation (H. Sachs). But we also find this dream wish in places where it
has no connection with life, and where the adult, in his waking hours, would
never recognize it. The reason for this is that the deepest and most uniform
motive for becoming unfriendly, especially between persons of the same sex,
has already made its influence felt in earliest childhood.
I mean the love rivalry, with the especial emphasis of the sex character. The
son, even as a small child, begins to develop an especial tenderness for his
mother, whom he considers as his own property, and feels his father to be a
rival who puts into question his individual possession; and in the same manner
the little daughter sees in her mother a person who is a disturbing element in
her tender relationship with her father, and who occupies a position that she
could very well fill herself. One learns from these observations to what early
years these ideas extend back—ideas which we designate as the Oedipus-
complex, because this myth realizes with a very slightly weakened effect the
two extreme wishes which grow out of the situation of the son—to kill his
father and take his mother to wife. I do not wish to maintain that the Oedipus-
complex covers entirely the relation of the child to its parents; this relation can
be much more complicated. Furthermore, the Oedipus-complex is more or less
well-developed; it may even experience a reversal, but it is a customary and
very important factor in the psychic life of the child; and one tends rather to
underestimate than to overestimate its influence and the developments which
may follow from it. In addition, children frequently react to the Oedipus-idea
through stimulation by the parents, who in the placing of their affection are
often led by sex-differences, so that the father prefers the daughter, the mother
the son; or again, where the marital affection has cooled, and this love is
substituted for the outworn love.
One cannot maintain that the world was very grateful to psychoanalytic
research for its discovery of the Oedipus-complex. On the contrary, it called
forth the strongest resistance on the part of adults; and persons who had
neglected to take part in denying this proscribed or tabooed feeling-relationship
later made good the omission by taking all value from the complex through
false interpretations. According to my unchanged conviction there is nothing to
deny and nothing to make more palatable. One should accept the fact,
recognized by the Greek myth itself, as inevitable destiny. On the other hand, it
is interesting that this Oedipus-complex, cast out of life, was yielded up to
poetry and given the freest play. O. Rank has shown in a careful study how this
very Oedipus-complex has supplied dramatic literature with a large number of
motives in unending variations, derivations and disguises, also in distorted
forms such as we recognize to be the work of a censor. We may also ascribe
this Oedipus-complex to those dreamers who were so fortunate as to escape in
later life these conflicts with their parents, and intimately associated therewith
we find what we call the castration complex, the reaction to sexual intimidation
or restriction, ascribed to the father, of early infantile sexuality.
By applying our former researches to the study of the psychic life of the
child, we may expect to find that the origin of other forbidden dream-wishes, of
excessive sexual impulses, may be explained in the same manner. Thus we are
moved to study the development of sex-life in the child also, and we discover
the following from a number of sources: In the first place, it is a mistake to
deny that the child has a sexual life, and to take it for granted that sexuality
commences with the ripening of the genitals at the time of puberty. On the
contrary—the child has from the very beginning a sexual life rich in content
and differing in numerous respects from that which is later considered normal.
What we call "perverse" in the life of the adult, differs from the normal in the
following respects: first, in disregard for the dividing line of species (the gulf
between man and animal); second, being insensible to the conventional feeling
of disgust; third, the incest-limitation (being prohibited from seeking sexual
satisfaction with near blood-relations); fourth, homosexuality, and fifth,
transferring the role of the genitals to other organs and other parts of the body.
None of these limitations exist in the beginning, but are gradually built up in
the course of development and education. The little child is free from them. He
knows no unbridgable chasm between man and animal; the arrogance with
which man distinguishes himself from the animal is a later acquisition. In the
beginning he is not disgusted at the sight of excrement, but slowly learns to be
so disgusted under the pressure of education; he lays no special stress on the
difference between the sexes, rather accredits to both the same genital
formation; he directs his earliest sexual desires and his curiosity toward those
persons closest to him, and who are dear to him for various reasons—his
parents, brothers and sisters, nurses; and finally, you may observe in him that
which later breaks through again, raised now to a love attraction, viz., that he
does not expect pleasure from his sexual organs alone, but that many other
parts of the body portray the same sensitiveness, are the media of analogous
sensations, and are able to play the role of the genitals. The child may, then, be
called "polymorphus perverse," and if he makes but slight use of all these
impulses, it is, on the one hand, because of their lesser intensity as compared to
later life, and on the other hand, because the bringing up of the child
immediately and energetically suppresses all his sexual expressions. This
suppression continues in theory, so to say, since the grown-ups are careful to
control part of the childish sex-expressions, and to disguise another part by
misrepresenting its sexual nature until they can deny the whole business. These
are often the same persons who discourse violently against all the sexual faults
of the child and then at the writing table defend the sexual purity of the same
children. Where children are left to themselves or are under the influence of
corruption, they often are capable of really conspicuous performances of
perverse sexual activity. To be sure, the grown-ups are right in looking upon
these things as "childish performances," as "play," for the child is not to be
judged as mature and answerable either before the bar of custom or before the
law, but these things do exist, they have their significance as indications of
innate characteristics as well as causes and furtherances of later developments,
they give us an insight into childhood sex-life and thereby into the sex life of
man. When we rediscover in the background of our distorted dreams all these
perverse wish-impulses, it means only that the dream has in this field traveled
back to the infantile condition.
Especially noteworthy among these forbidden wishes are those of incest, i.e.,
those directed towards sexual intercourse with parents and brothers and sisters.
You know what antipathy society feels toward such intercourse, or at least
pretends to feel, and what weight is laid on the prohibitions directed against it.
The most monstrous efforts have been made to explain this fear of incest. Some
have believed that it is due to evolutionary foresight on the part of nature,
which is psychically represented by this prohibition, because inbreeding would
deteriorate the race-character; others maintained that because of having lived
together since early childhood the sexual desire is diverted from the persons
under consideration. In both cases, furthermore, the incest-avoidance would be
automatically assured, and it would be difficult to understand the need of strict
prohibitions, which rather point to the presence of a strong desire.
Psychoanalytic research has incontrovertibly shown that the incestuous love
choice is rather the first and most customary choice, and that not until later is
there any resistance, the source of which probably is to be found in the
individual psychology.
Let us sum up what our plunge into child psychology has given us toward the
understanding of the dream. We found not only that the materials of forgotten
childhood experiences are accessible to the dream, but we saw also that the
psychic life of children, with all its peculiarities, its egoism, its incestuous love-
choice, etc., continues, for the purposes of the dream, in the unconscious, and
that the dream nightly leads us back to this infantile stage. Thus it becomes
more certain that the unconscious in our psychic life is the infantile. The
estranging impression that there is so much evil in man, begins to weaken. This
frightful evil is simply the original, primitive, infantile side of psychic life,
which we may find in action in children, which we overlook partly because of
the slightness of its dimensions, partly because it is lightly considered, since we
demand no ethical heights of the child. Since the dream regresses to this stage,
it seems to have made apparent the evil that lies in us. But it is only a deceptive
appearance by which we have allowed ourselves to be frightened. We are not
so evil as we might suspect from the interpretation of dreams.
If the evil impulses of the dream are merely infantilism, a return to the
beginnings of our ethical development, since the dream simply makes children
of us again in thinking and in feeling, we need not be ashamed of these evil
dreams if we are reasonable. But being reasonable is only a part of psychic life.
Many things are taking place there that are not reasonable, and so it happens
that we are ashamed of such dreams, and unreasonably. We turn them over to
the dream-censorship, are ashamed and angry if one of these dreams has in
some unusual manner succeeded in penetrating into consciousness in an
undistorted form, so that we must recognize it—in fact, we are at times just as
ashamed of the distorted dream as we would be if we understood it. Just think
of the scandalized opinion of the fine old lady about her uninterpreted dream of
"services of love." The problem is not yet solved, and it is still possible that
upon further study of the evil in the dream we shall come to some other
decision and arrive at another valuation of human nature.
As a result of the whole investigation we grasp two facts, which, however,
disclose only the beginnings of new riddles, new doubts. First: the regression of
dream-work is not only formal, it is also of greater import. It not only translates
our thoughts into a primitive form of expression, but it reawakens the
peculiarities of our primitive psychic life, the ancient predominance of the ego,
the earliest impulses of our sexual life, even our old intellectual property, if we
may consider the symbolic relations as such. And second: We must accredit all
these infantilisms which once were governing, and solely governing, to the
unconscious, about which our ideas now change and are broadened.
Unconscious is no longer a name for what is at that time latent, the unconscious
is an especial psychic realm with wish-impulses of its own, with its own
method of expression and with a psychic mechanism peculiar to itself, all of
which ordinarily are not in force. But the latent dream-thoughts, which we have
solved by means of the dream-interpretation, are not of this realm. They are
much more nearly the same as any we may have thought in our waking hours.
Still they are unconscious; how does one solve this contradiction? We begin to
see that a distinction must be made. Something that originates in our conscious
life, and that shares its characteristics—we call it the day-remnants—combines
in the dream-fabrication with something else out of the realm of the
unconscious. Between these two parts the dream-work completes itself. The
influencing of the day-remnants by the unconscious necessitates regression.
This is the deepest insight into the nature of the dream that we are able to attain
without having searched through further psychic realms. The time will soon
come, however, when we shall clothe the unconscious character of the latent
dream-thought with another name, which shall differentiate it from the
unconscious out of the realm of the infantile.
We may, to be sure, propound the question: what forces the psychological
activity during sleep to such regression? Why do not the sleep disturbing
psychic stimuli do the job without it? And if they must, because of the dream
censorship, disguise themselves through old forms of expression which are no
longer comprehensible, what is the use of giving new life to old, long-outgrown
psychic stimuli, wishes and character types, that is, why the material regression
in addition to the formal? The only satisfactory answer would be this, that only
in this manner can a dream be built up, that dynamically the dream-stimulus
can be satisfied only in this way. But for the time being we have no right to
give such an answer.

FOURTEENTH LECTURE

THE DREAM

Wish Fulfillment
MAY I bring to your attention once more the ground we have already
covered? How, when we met with dream distortion in the application of our
technique, we decided to leave it alone for the time being, and set out to obtain
decisive information about the nature of the dream by way of infantile dreams?
How, then, armed with the results of this investigation, we attacked dream
distortion directly and, I trust, in some measure overcame it? But we must
remind ourselves that the results we found along the one way and along the
other do not fit together as well as might be. It is now our task to put these two
results together and balance them against one another.
From both sources we have seen that the dream-work consists essentially in
the transposition of thoughts into an hallucinatory experience. How that can
take place is puzzling enough, but it is a problem of general psychology with
which we shall not busy ourselves here. We have learned from the dreams of
children that the purpose of the dream-work is the satisfaction of one of the
sleep-disturbing psychic stimuli by means of a wish fulfillment. We were
unable to make a similar statement concerning distorted dreams, until we knew
how to interpret them. But from the very beginning we expected to be able to
bring the distorted dreams under the same viewpoint as the infantile. The
earliest fulfillment of this expectation led us to believe that as a matter of fact
all dreams are the dreams of children and that they all work with infantile
materials, through childish psychic stimuli and mechanics. Since we consider
that we have conquered dream-distortion, we must continue the investigation to
see whether our hypothesis of wish-fulfillment holds good for distorted dreams
also.
We very recently subjected a number of dreams to interpretation, but left
wish-fulfillment entirely out of consideration. I am convinced that the question
again and again occurred to you: "What about wish-fulfillment, which
ostensibly is the goal of dream-work?" This question is important. It was, in
fact, the question of our lay-critics. As you know, humanity has an instinctive
antagonism toward intellectual novelties. The expression of such a novelty
should immediately be reduced to its narrowest limits, if possible, comprised in
a commonplace phrase. Wish-fulfillment has become that phrase for the new
dream-science. The layman asks: "Where is the wish-fulfillment?"
Immediately, upon having heard that the dream is supposed to be a wish-
fulfillment, and indeed, by the very asking of the question, he answers it with a
denial. He is at once reminded of countless dream-experiences of his own,
where his aversion to the dream was enormous, so that the proposition of
psychoanalytic dream-science seems very improbable to him. It is a simple
matter to answer the layman that wish-fulfillment cannot be apparent in
distorted dreams, but must be sought out, so that it is not recognized until the
dream is interpreted. We know, too, that the wishes in these distorted dreams
are prohibited wishes, are wishes rejected by the censor and that their existence
lit the very cause of the dream distortion and the reason for the intrusion of the
dream censor. But it is hard to convince the lay-critic that one may not seek the
wish-fulfillment in the dream before the dream has been interpreted. This is
continually forgotten. His sceptical attitude toward the theory of wish-
fulfillment is really nothing more than a consequence of dream-censorship, a
substitute and a result of the denial of this censored dream-wish.
To be sure, even we shall find it necessary to explain to ourselves why there
are so many dreams of painful content, and especially dreams of fear. We see
here, for the first time, the problem of the affects in the dream, a problem
worthy of separate investigation, but which unfortunately cannot be considered
here. If the dream is a wish-fulfillment, painful experiences ought to be
impossible in the dream; in that the lay-critics apparently are right. But three
complications, not thought of by them, must be taken into consideration.
First: It may be that the dream work has not been successful in creating a
wish-fulfillment, so that a part of the painful effect of the dream-thought is left
over for the manifest dream. Analysis should then show that these thoughts
were far more painful even than the dream which was built out of them. This
much may be proved in each instance. We admit, then, that the dream work has
not achieved its purpose any more than the drink-dream due to the thirst-
stimulus has achieved its purpose of satisfying the thirst. One remains thirsty,
and must wake up in order to drink. But it was a real dream, it sacrificed
nothing of its nature. We must say: "Although strength be lacking, let us praise
the will to do." The clearly recognizable intention, at least, remains
praiseworthy. Such cases of miscarriage are not unusual. A contributory cause
is this, that it is so much more difficult for the dream work to change affect into
content in its own sense; the affects often show great resistance, and thus it
happens that the dream work has worked the painful content of the dream-
thoughts over into a wish-fulfillment, while the painful affect continues in its
unaltered form. Hence in dreams of this type the affect does not fit the content
at all, and our critics may say the dream is so little a wish-fulfillment that a
harmless content may be experienced as painful. In answer to this unintelligible
remark we say that the wish-fulfillment tendency in the dream-work appears
most prominent, because isolated, in just such dreams. The error is due to the
fact that he who does not know neurotics imagines the connection between
content and affect as all too intimate, and cannot, therefore, grasp the fact that a
content may be altered without any corresponding change in the accompanying
affect-expression.
 A second, far more important and more extensive consideration, equally
disregarded by the layman, is the following: A wish-fulfillment certainly must
bring pleasure—but to whom? Naturally, to him who has the wish. But we
know from the dreamer that he stands in a very special relationship to his
wishes. He casts them aside, censors them, he will have none of them. Their
fulfillment gives him no pleasure, but only the opposite. Experience then shows
that this opposite, which must still be explained, appears in the form of fear.
The dreamer in his relation to his dream-wishes can be compared only to a
combination of two persons bound together by some strong common quality.
Instead of further explanations I shall give you a well-known fairy tale, in
which you will again find the relationships I have mentioned. A good fairy
promises a poor couple, husband and wife, to fulfill their first three wishes.
They are overjoyed, and determine to choose their three wishes with great care.
But the woman allows herself to be led astray by the odor of cooking sausages
emanating from the next cottage, and wishes she had a couple of such sausages.
Presto! they are there. This is the first wish-fulfillment. Now the husband
becomes angry, and in his bitterness wishes that the sausages might hang from
the end of her nose. This, too, is accomplished, and the sausages cannot be
removed from their new location. So this is the second wish-fulfillment, but the
wish is that of the husband. The wife is very uncomfortable because of the
fulfillment of this wish. You know how the fairy tale continues. Since both
husband and wife are fundamentally one, the third wish must be that the
sausages be removed from the nose of the wife. We could make use of this
fairy tale any number of times in various connections; here it serves only as an
illustration of the possibility that the wish-fulfillment for the one personality
may lead to an aversion on the part of the other, if the two do not agree with
one another.
It will not be difficult now to come to a better understanding of the anxiety-
dream. We shall make one more observation, then we shall come to a
conclusion to which many things lead. The observation is that the anxiety
dreams often have a content which is entirely free from distortion and in which
the censorship is, so to speak, eluded. The anxiety dream is ofttimes an
undisguised wish-fulfillment, not, to be sure, of an accepted, but of a discarded
wish. The anxiety development has stepped into the place of the censorship.
While one may assert of the infantile dream that it is the obvious fulfillment of
a wish that has gained admittance, and of the distorted dream that it is the
disguised fulfillment of a suppressed wish, he must say of the anxiety dream
that the only suitable formula is this, that it is the obvious fulfillment of a
suppressed wish. Anxiety is the mark which shows that the suppressed wish
showed itself stronger than the censorship, that it put through its wish-
fulfillment despite the censorship, or was about to put it through. We
understand that what is wish-fulfillment for the suppressed wish is for us, who
are on the side of the dream-censor, only a painful sensation and a cause for
antagonism. The anxiety which occurs in dreams is, if you wish, anxiety
because of the strength of these otherwise suppressed wishes. Why this
antagonism arises in the form of anxiety cannot be discovered from a study of
the dream alone; one must obviously study anxiety from other sources.
What holds true for the undistorted anxiety dream we may assume to be true
also of those dreams which have undergone partial distortion, and of the other
dreams of aversion whose painful impressions very probably denote
approximations of anxiety. The anxiety dream is usually also a dream that
causes waking; we habitually interrupt sleep before the suppressed wish of the
dream has accomplished its entire fulfillment in opposition to the censorship. In
this case the execution of the dream is unsuccessful, but this does not change its
nature. We have likened the dream to the night watchman or sleep-defender
who wishes to protect our sleep from being disturbed. The night watchman,
too, sometimes wakes the sleeper when he feels himself too weak to drive away
the disturbance or danger all by himself. Yet we are often able to remain asleep,
even when the dream begins to become suspicious, and begins to assume the
form of anxiety. We say to ourselves in our sleep: "It's only a dream," and we
sleep on.
When does it happen that the dream-wish is in a position to overpower this
censorship? The conditions for this may be just as easily furnished by the
dream-wish as by the dream-censorship. The wish may, for unknown reasons,
become irresistible; but one gets the impression that more frequently the
attitude of the dream censorship is to blame for this disarrangement in the
relations of the forces. We have already heard that the censorship works with
varying intensity in each single instance, that it handles each element with a
different degree of strictness; now we should like to add the proposition that it
is an extremely variable thing and does not exert equal force on every occasion
against the same objectionable element. If on occasion the censorship feels
itself powerless with respect to a dream-wish which threatens to over-ride it,
then, instead of distortion, it makes use of the final means at its disposal, it
destroys the sleep condition by the development of anxiety.
And now it occurs to us that we know absolutely nothing yet as to why these
evil, depraved wishes are aroused just at night, in order that they may disturb
our sleep. The answer can only be an assumption which is based on the nature
of the condition of sleep. During the day the heavy pressure of a censorship
weighs upon these wishes, making it impossible, as a rule, for them to express
themselves in any manner. At night, evidently, this censorship is withdrawn for
the benefit of the single sleep-wish, in the same manner as are all the other
interests of psychic life, or at least placed in a position of very minor
importance. The forbidden wishes must thank this noctural deposition of the
censor for being able to raise their heads again. There are nervous persons
troubled with insomnia who admit that their sleeplessness was in the beginning
voluntary. They did not trust themselves to fall asleep, because they were afraid
of their dreams, that is, of the results due to a slackening of the censorship. So
you can readily see that this withdrawal of the censor does not in itself signify
rank carelessness. Sleep weakens our power to move; our evil intentions, even
if they do begin to stir, can accomplish nothing but a dream, which for practical
purposes is harmless, and the highly sensible remark of the sleepers, a night-
time remark indeed, but not a part of the dream life, "it is only a dream," is
reminiscent of this quieting circumstance. So let us grant this, and sleep on.
If, thirdly, you recall the concept that the dreamer, struggling against his
wishes, is to be compared to a summation of two separate persons, in some
manner closely connected, you will be able to grasp the further possibility of
how a thing which is highly unpleasant, namely, punishment, may be
accomplished by wish-fulfillment. Here again the fairy tale of the three wishes
can be of service to us: the sausages on the plate are the direct wish-fulfillment
of the first person, the woman; the sausages at the end of her nose are the wish-
fulfillment of the second person, the husband, but at the same time the
punishment for the stupid wish of the woman. Among the neurotics we find
again the motivation of the third wish, which remains in fairy tales only. There
are many such punishment-tendencies in the psychic life of man; they are very
powerful, and we may make them responsible for some of our painful dreams.
Perhaps you now say that at this rate, not very much of the famed wish-
fulfillment is left. But upon closer view you will admit that you are wrong. In
contrast to the many-sided to be discussed, of what the dream might be—and,
according to numerous authors, is—the solution (wish-fulfillment, anxiety-
fulfillment, punishment-fulfillment) is indeed very restricted. That is why
anxiety is the direct antithesis of the wish, why antitheses are so closely allied
in association and why they occur together in the unconscious, as we have
heard; and that is why punishment, too, is a wish-fulfillment of the other, the
censoring person.
On the whole, then, I have made no concessions to your protestation against
the theory of wish-fulfillment. We are bound, however, to establish wish-
fulfillment in every dream no matter how distorted, and we certainly do not
wish to withdraw from this task. Let us go back to the dream, already
interpreted, of the three bad theatre tickets for 1 Fl. 50 Kr. from which we have
already learned so much. I hope you still remember it. A lady who tells her
husband during the day that her friend Elise, only three months younger than
herself, has become engaged, dreams she is in the theatre with her husband.
Half the parquet is empty. Her husband says, "Elise and her fiancé wanted to go
to the theatre, too, but couldn't because they could get only poor seats, three for
one gulden and a half." She was of the opinion that that wasn't so unfortunate.
We discovered that the dream-thought originated in her discontent at having
married too soon, and the fact that she was dissatisfied with her husband. We
may be curious as to the manner in which these thoughts have been worked
over into a wish-fulfillment, and where their traces may be found in the
manifest content. Now we know that the element "too soon, premature" is
eliminated from the dream by the censor. The empty parquet is a reference to it.
The puzzling "three for 1 Fl. 50 Kr." is now, with the help of symbolism which
we have since learned, more understandable.[36] The "3" really means a
husband, and the manifest element is easy to translate: to buy a husband for her
dowry ("I could have bought one ten times better for my dowry"). The marriage
is obviously replaced by going into the theatre. "Buying the tickets too soon"
directly takes the place of the premature marriage. This substitution is the work
of the wish-fulfillment. Our dreamer was not always so dissatisfied with her
early marriage as she was on the day she received news of the engagement of
her friend. At the time she was proud of her marriage and felt herself more
favored than her friend. Naive girls have frequently confided to their friends
after their engagement that soon they, too, will be able to go to all the plays
hitherto forbidden, and see everything. The desire to see plays, the curiosity
that makes its appearance here, was certainly in the beginning directed towards
sex matters, the sex-life, especially the sex-life of the parents, and then became
a strong motive which impelled the girl to an early marriage. In this way the
visit to the theatre becomes an obvious representative substitute for being
married. In the momentary annoyance at her early marriage she recalls the time
when the early marriage was a wish-fulfillment for her, because she had
satisfied her curiosity; and she now replaces the marriage, guided by the old
wish-impulse, with the going to the theatre.
We may say that we have not sought out the simplest example as proof of a
hidden wish-fulfillment. We would have to proceed in analogous manner with
other distorted dreams. I cannot do that for you, and simply wish to express the
conviction that it will be successful everywhere. But I wish to continue along
this theoretical line. Experience has taught me that it is one of the most
dangerous phases of the entire dream science, and that many contradictions and
misunderstandings are connected therewith. Besides, you are perhaps still
under the impression that I have retracted a part of my declaration, in that I said
that the dream is a fulfilled wish or its opposite, an actualized anxiety or
punishment, and you will think this is the opportunity to compel further
reservations of me. I have also heard complaints that I am too abrupt about
things which appear evident to me, and that for that reason I do not present the
thing convincingly enough.
 If a person has gone thus far with us in dream-interpretation, and accepted
everything that has been offered, it is not unusual for him to call a halt at wish-
fulfillment, and say, "Granted that in every instance the dream has a meaning,
and that this meaning can be disclosed by psychoanalytic technique, why must
this dream, despite all evidence to the contrary, always be forced into the
formula of wish-fulfillment? Why might not the meaning of this nocturnal
thought be as many-sided as thought is by day; why may not the dream in one
case express a fulfilled wish, in another, as you yourself say, the opposite
thereof, an actualized anxiety; or why may it not correspond to a resolution, a
warning, a reflection with its pro's and con's, a reproach, a goad to conscience,
an attempt to prepare oneself for a contemplated performance, etc? Why always
nothing more than a wish, or at best, its opposite?"
One might maintain that a difference of opinion on these points is of no great
importance, so long as we are at one otherwise. We might say that it is enough
to have discovered the meaning of the dream, and the way to recognize it; that
it is a matter of no importance, if we have too narrowly limited this meaning.
But this is not so. A misunderstanding of this point strikes at the nature of our
knowledge of the dream, and endangers its worth for the understanding of
neuroses. Then, too, that method of approach which is esteemed in the business
world as genteel is out of place in scientific endeavors, and harmful.
My first answer to the question why the dream may not be many-sided in its
meaning is the usual one in such instances: I do not know why it should not be
so. I would not be opposed to such a state of affairs. As far as I am concerned,
it could well be true. Only one small matter prevents this broader and more
comfortable explanation of the dream—namely, that as a matter of fact it isn't
so. My second answer emphasizes the fact that the assumption that the dream
corresponds to numerous forms of thought and intellectual operations is no
stranger to me. In a story about a sick person I once reported a dream that
occurred three nights running and then stopped, and I explained this
suppression by saying that the dream corresponded to a resolution which had
no reason to recur after having been carried out. More recently I published a
dream which corresponded to a confession. How is it possible for me to
contradict myself, and maintain that the dream is always only a fulfilled wish?
I do that, because I do not wish to admit a stupid misunderstanding which
might cost us the fruits of all our labors with regard to the dream, a
misunderstanding which confuses the dream with the latent dream-thought and
affirms of the dream something that applies specifically and solely to the latter.
For it is entirely correct that the dream can represent, and be replaced by all
those things we enumerated: a resolution, a warning, reflection, preparation, an
attempt to solve a problem, etc. But if you look closely, you will recognize that
all these things are true only of the latent dream thoughts, which have been
changed about in the dream. You learn from the interpretation of the dreams
that the person's unconscious thinking is occupied with such resolutions,
preparations, reflections, etc., out of which the dream-work then builds the
dream. If you are not at the time interested in the dream-work, but are very
much interested in the unconscious thought-work of man, you eliminate the
dream-work, and say of the dream, for all practical purposes quite correctly,
that it corresponds to a warning, a resolution, etc. This often happens in
psychoanalytic activity. People endeavor for the most part only to destroy the
dream form, and to substitute in its place in the sequence the latent thoughts out
of which the dream was made.
Thus we learn, from the appreciation of the latent dream-thoughts, that all the
highly complicated psychic acts we have enumerated can go on unconsciously,
a result as wonderful as it is confusing.
But to return, you are right only if you admit that you have made use of an
abbreviated form of speech, and if you do not believe that you must connect the
many-sidedness we have mentioned with the essence of the dream. When you
speak of the dream you must mean either the manifest dream, i.e., the product
of the dream-work, or at most the dream-work itself—that psychic occurrence
which forms the manifest dream out of the latent dream thought. Any other use
of the word is a confusion of concept that can only cause trouble. If your
assertions refer to the latent thoughts back of the dream, say so, and do not
cloud the problem of the dream by using such a faulty means of expression.
The latent dream thoughts are the material which the dream-work remolds into
the manifest dream. Why do you insist upon confusing the material with the
work that makes use of it? Are you any better off than those who knew only the
product of this work, and could explain neither where it came from nor how it
was produced?
The only essential thing in the dream is the dream-work that has had its
influence upon the thought-material. We have no right to disregard it
theoretically even if, in certain practical situations, we may fail to take it into
account. Analytic observation, too, shows that the dream-work never limits
itself to translating these thoughts in the archaic or regressive mode of
expression known to you. Rather it regularly adds something which does not
belong to the latent thoughts of waking, but which is the essential motive of
dream-formation. This indispensable ingredient is at the same time the
unconscious wish, for the fulfillment of which the dream content is rebuilt. The
dream may be any conceivable thing, if you take into account only the thoughts
represented by it, warning, resolution, preparation, etc.; it is also always the
fulfillment of an unknown wish, and it is this only if you look upon it as the
result of the dream-work. A dream is never itself a resolution, a warning, and
no more—but always a resolution, etc., translated into an archaic form of
expression with the help of the unconscious wish, and changed about for the
purpose of fulfilling this wish. The one characteristic, wish-fulfillment, is
constant; the other may vary; it may itself be a wish at times, so that the dream,
with the aid of an unconscious wish, presents as fulfilled a latent wish out of
waking hours.
I understand all this very well, but I do not know whether or not I shall be
successful in making you understand it as well. I have difficulties, too, in
proving it to you. This cannot be done without, on the one hand, careful
analysis of many dreams, and on the other hand this most difficult and most
important point of our conception of the dream cannot be set forth convincingly
without reference to things to follow. Can you, in fact, believe that taking into
consideration the intimate relationship of all things, one is able to penetrate
deeply into the nature of one thing without having carefully considered other
things of a very similar nature? Since we know nothing as yet about the closest
relatives of the dream, neurotic symptoms, we must once again content
ourselves with what has already been accomplished. I want to explain one more
example to you, and propose a new viewpoint.
Let us again take up that dream to which we have several times recurred, the
dream of the three theatre tickets for 1 Fl. 50 Kr. I can assure you that I took
this examplequite unpremeditatedly at first. You are acquainted with the latent
dream thoughts: annoyance, upon hearing that her friend had just now become
engaged, at the thought that she herself had hurried so to be married; contempt
for her husband; the idea that she might have had a better one had she waited.
We also know the wish, which made a dream out of these thoughts—it is
"curiosity to see," being permitted to go to the theatre, very likely a derivation
from the old curiosity finally to know just what happens when one is married.
This curiosity, as is well known, regularly directs itself in the case of children
to the sex-life of the parents. It is an impulse of childhood, and in so far as it
persists later, an impulse whose roots reach back into the infantile. But that
day's news played no part in awaking the curiosity, it awoke only annoyance
and regret. This wish impulse did not have anything to do immediately with the
latent dream thoughts, and we could fit the result of the dream interpretation
into the analysis without considering the wish impulse at all. But then, the
annoyance itself was not capable of producing the dream; a dream could not be
derived from the thought: "It was stupid to marry so soon," except by reviving
the old wish finally to see what happens when one is married. The wish then
formed the dream content, in that it replaced marriage by going to the theatre,
and gave it the form of an earlier wish-fulfillment: "so now I may go to the
theatre and see all the forbidden things, and you may not. I am married and you
must wait." In such a manner the present situation was transposed into its
opposite, an old triumph put into the place of the recent defeat. Added thereto
was a satisfied curiosity amalgamated with a satisfied egoistic sense of rivalry.
This satisfaction determines the manifest dream content in which she really is
sitting in the theatre, and her friend was unable to get tickets. Those bits of
dream content are affixed to this satisfaction situation as unfitting and
inexplicable modifications, behind which the latent dream thoughts still hide.
Dream interpretation must take into consideration everything that serves toward
the representation of the wish-fulfillment and must reconstruct from these
suggestions the painful latent dream-thought.
The observation I now wish to make is for the purpose of drawing your
attention to the latent, dream thoughts, now pushed to the fore. I beg of you not
to forget first, that the dreamer is unconscious of them, second, they are entirely
logical and continuous, so that they may be understood as a comprehensible
reaction to the dream occasion, third, that they may have the value of any
desired psychic impulse or intellectual operation. I shall now designate these
thoughts more forcibly than before as "day-remnants"; the dreamer may
acknowledge them or not. I now separate day-remnants and latent dream
thoughts in accordance with our previous usage of calling everything that we
discover in interpreting the dream "latent dream thoughts," while the day-
remnants are only a part of the latent dream thoughts. Then our conception goes
to show that something additional has been added to the day-remnants,
something which also belonged to the unconscious, a strong but suppressed
wish impulse, and it is this alone that has made possible the dream fabrication.
The influence of this wish impulse on the day-remnants creates the further
participation of the latent dream thoughts, thoughts which no longer appear
rational and understandable in relation to waking life.
In explaining the relationship of the day-remnants to the unconscious wish I
have made use of a comparison which I can only repeat here. Every
undertaking requires a capitalist, who defrays the expenses, and an
entrepreneur, who has the idea and understands how to carry it out. The role of
the capitalist in the dream fabrication is always played by the unconscious
wish; it dispenses the psychic energy for dream-building. The actual worker is
the day-remnant, which determines how the expenditure is to be made. Now the
capitalist may himself have the idea and the particularized knowledge, or the
entrepreneur may have the capital. This simplifies the practical situation, but
makes its theoretical comprehension more difficult. In economics we always
distinguish between the capitalist and the entrepreneur aspect in a single
person, and thus we reconstruct the fundamental situation which was the point
of departure for our comparison. In dream-fabrication the same variations
occur. I shall leave their further development to you.
We can go no further here, for you have probably long been disturbed by a
reflection which deserves to be heard. Are the day-remnants, you ask, really
unconscious in the same sense as the unconscious wish which is essential to
making them suitable for the dream? You discern correctly. Here lies the
salient point of the whole affair. They are not unconscious in the same sense.
The dream wish belongs to a different unconsciousness, that which we have
recognized as of infantile origin, fitted out with special mechanisms. It is
entirely appropriate to separate these two types of unconsciousness and give
them different designations. But let us rather wait until we have become
acquainted with the field of neurotic symptoms. If people say one
unconsciousness is fantastic, what will they say when we acknowledge that we
arrived at our conclusions by using two kinds of unconsciousness?
Let us stop here. Once more you have heard something incomplete; but is
there not hope in the thought that this science has a continuation which will be
brought to light either by ourselves or by those to follow? And have not we
ourselves discovered a sufficient number of new and surprising things?

FIFTEENTH LECTURE

THE DREAM

Doubtful Points and Criticism

LET us not leave the subject of dreams before we have touched upon the
most common doubts and uncertainties which have arisen in connection with
the new ideas and conceptions we have discussed up to this point. The more
attentive members of the audience probably have already accumulated some
material bearing upon this.
1. You may have received the impression that the results of our work of
interpretation of the dream have left so much that is uncertain, despite our close
adherence to technique, that a true translation of the manifest dream into the
latent dream thoughts is thereby rendered impossible. In support of this you
will point out that in the first place, one never knows whether a specific
element of the dream is to be taken literally or symbolically, since those
elements which are used symbolically do not, because of that fact, cease to be
themselves. But if one has no objective standard by which to decide this, the
interpretation is, as to this point, left to the discretion of the dream interpreter.
Moreover, because of the way in which the dream work combines opposites, it
is always uncertain whether a specific dream element is to be taken in the
positive or the negative sense, whether it is to be understood as itself or as its
opposite. Hence this is another opportunity for the exercise of the interpreter's
discretion. In the third place, in consequence of the frequency with which every
sort of inversion is practised in the dream, the dream interpreter is at liberty to
assume such an inversion at any point of the dream he pleases. And finally you
will say, you have heard that one is seldom sure that the interpretation which is
found is the only possible one. There is danger of overlooking a thoroughly
admissible second interpretation of the same dream. Under these
circumstances, you will conclude there is a scope left for the discretion of the
interpreter, the breadth of which seems incompatible with the objective
accuracy of the results. Or you may also conclude that the fault does not rest
with the dream but that the inadequacies of our dream interpretation result from
errors in our conceptions and hypotheses.
All your material is irreproachable, but I do not believe that it justifies your
conclusions in two directions, namely, that dream interpretation as we practice
it is sacrificed to arbitrariness and that the deficiency of our results makes the
justification of our method doubtful. If you will substitute for the arbitrariness
of the interpreter, his skill, his experience, his comprehension, I agree with you.
We shall surely not be able to dispense with some such personal factor,
particularly not in difficult tasks of dream interpretation. But this same state of
affairs exists also in other scientific occupations. There is no way in which to
make sure that one man will not wield a technique less well, or utilize it more
fully, than another. What might, for example, impress you as arbitrariness in
the interpretation of symbols, is compensated for by the fact that as a rule the
connection of the dream thoughts among themselves, the connection of the
dream with the life of the dreamer, and the whole psychic situation in which the
dream occurs, chooses just one of the possible interpretations advanced and
rejects the others as useless for its purposes. The conclusion drawn from the
inadequacies of dream interpretation, that our hypotheses are wrong, is
weakened by an observation which shows that the ambiguity and indefiniteness
of the dream is rather characteristic and necessarily to be expected.
Recollect that we said that the dream work translates the dream thoughts into
primitive expressions analogous to picture writing. All these primitive systems
of expression are, however, subject to such indefiniteness and ambiguities, but
it does not follow that we are justified in doubting their usefulness. You know
that the fusion of opposites by the dream-work is analogous to the so-called
"antithetical meaning of primitive words," in the oldest languages. The
philologist, R. Abel (1884), whom we have to thank for this point of view,
admonishes us not to believe that the meaning of the communication which one
person made to another when using such ambiguous words was necessarily
unclear. Tone and gesture used in connection with the words would have left no
room for doubt as to which of the two opposites the speaker intended to
communicate. In writing, where gesture is lacking, it was replaced by a
supplementary picture sign not intended to be spoken, as for example by the
picture of a little man squatting lazily or standing erect, according to whether
the ambiguous hieroglyphic was to mean "weak" or "strong." It was in this way
that one avoided any misunderstanding despite the ambiguity of the sounds and
signs.
We recognize in the ancient systems of expression, e.g., the writings of those
oldest languages, a number of uncertainties which we would not tolerate in our
present-day writings. Thus in many Semitic writings only the consonants of
words are indicated. The reader had to supply the omitted vowels according to
his knowledge and the context. Hieroglyphic writing does not proceed in
exactly this way, but quite similarly, and that is why the pronunciation of old
Egyptian has remained unknown to us. The holy writings of the Egyptians
contain still other uncertainties. For example, it is left to the discretion of the
writer whether or not he shall arrange the pictures from right to left or from left
to right. To be able to read we have to follow the rule that we must depend
upon the faces of the figures, birds, and the like. The writer, however, could
also arrange the picture signs in vertical rows, and in inscriptions on small
objects he was guided by considerations of beauty and proportion further to
change the order of the signs. Probably the most confusing feature of
hieroglyphic writing is to be found in the fact that there is no space between
words. The pictures stretch over the page at uniform distances from one
another, and generally one does not know whether a sign belongs to what has
gone before or is the beginning of a new word. Persian cuneiform writing, on
the other hand, makes use of an oblique wedge sign to separate the words.
The Chinese tongue and script is exceedingly old, but still used by four
hundred million people. Please do not think I understand anything about it. I
have only informed myself concerning it because I hoped to find analogies to
the indefinite aspects of the dream. Nor was I disappointed. The
Chinese language is filled with so many vagaries that it strikes terror into our
hearts. It consists, as is well known, of a number of syllable sounds which are
spoken singly or are combined in twos. One of the chief dialects has about four
hundred such sounds. Now since the vocabulary of this dialect is estimated at
about four thousand words, it follows that every sound has on an average of ten
different meanings, some less but others, consequently, more. Hence there are a
great number of ways of avoiding a multiplicity of meaning, since one cannot
guess from the context alone which of the ten meanings of the syllable sound
the speaker intended to convey to the hearer. Among them are the combining of
two sounds into a compounded word and the use of four different "tones" with
which to utter these syllables. For our purposes of comparison, it is still more
interesting to note that this language has practically no grammar. It is
impossible to say of a one-syllable word whether it is a noun, a verb, or an
adjective, and we find none of those changes in the forms of the words by
means of which we might recognize sex, number, ending, tense or mood. The
language, therefore, might be said to consist of raw material, much in the same
manner as our thought language is broken up by the dream work into its raw
materials when the expressions of relationship are left out. In the Chinese, in all
cases of vagueness the decision is left to the understanding of the hearer, who is
guided by the context. I have secured an example of a Chinese saying which,
literally translated, reads: "Little to be seen, much to wonder at." That is not
difficult to understand. It may mean, "The less a man has seen, the more he
finds to wonder at," or, "There is much to admire for the man who has seen
little." Naturally, there is no need to choose between these two translations,
which differ only in grammar. Despite these uncertainties, we are assured, the
Chinese language is an extraordinarily excellent medium for the expression of
thought. Vagueness does not, therefore, necessarily lead to ambiguity.
Now we must certainly admit that the condition of affairs is far less favorable
in the expression-system of the dream than in these ancient languages and
writings. For, after all, these latter are really designed for communication, that
is to say, they were always intended to be understood, no matter in what way
and with what aids. But it is just this characteristic which the dream lacks. The
dream does not want to tell anyone anything, it is no vehicle of communication,
it is, on the contrary, constructed so as not to be understood. For that reason we
must not be surprised or misled if we should discover that a number of the
ambiguities and vagaries of the dream do not permit of determination. As the
one specific gain of our comparison, we have only the realization that such
uncertainties as people tried to make use of in objecting to the validity of our
dream interpretation, are rather the invariable characteristic of all primitive
systems of expression.
How far the dream can really be understood can be determined only by
practice and experience. My opinion is, that that is very far indeed, and the
comparison of results which correctly trained analysts have gathered confirms
my view. The lay public, even that part of the lay public which is interested in
science, likes, in the face of the difficulties and uncertainties of a scientific task,
to make what I consider an unjust show of its superior scepticism. Perhaps not
all of you are acquainted with the fact that a similar situation arose in the
history of the deciphering of the Babylonian-Assyrian inscriptions. There was a
period then when public opinion went far in declaring the decipherors of
cuneiform writing to be visionaries and the whole research a "fraud." But in the
year 1857 the Royal Asiatic Society made a decisive test. It challenged the four
most distinguished decipherors of cuneiform writing, Rawlinson, Hincks, Fox
Talbot and Oppert, each to send to it in a sealed envelope his independent
translation of a newly discovered inscription, and the Society was then able to
testify, after having made a comparison of the four readings, that their
agreement was sufficiently marked to justify confidence in what already had
been accomplished, and faith in further progress. At this the mockery of the
learned lay world gradually came to an end and the confidence in the reading of
cuneiform documents has grown appreciably since then.
2. A second series of objections is firmly grounded in the impression from
which you too probably are not free, that a number of the solutions of dream
interpretations which we find it necessary to make seem forced, artificial, far-
fetched, in other words, violent or even comical or jocose. These comments are
so frequent that I shall choose at random the latest example which has come to
my attention. Recently, in free Switzerland, the director of a boarding-school
was relieved of his position on account of his active interest in psychoanalysis.
He raised objections and a Berne newspaper made public the judgment of the
school authorities. I quote from that article some sentences which apply to
psychoanalysis: "Moreover, we are surprised at the many far-fetched and
artificial examples as found in the aforementioned book of Dr. Pfister of
Zurich.... Thus, it certainly is a cause of surprise when the director of a
boarding-school so uncritically accepts all these assertions and apparent
proofs." These observations are offered as the decisions of "one who judges
calmly." I rather think this calm is "artificial." Let us examine these remarks
more closely in the hope that a little reflection and knowledge of the subject
can be no detriment to calm judgment.
It is positively refreshing to see how quickly and unerringly some individuals
can judge a delicate question of abstruse psychology by first impressions. The
interpretations seem to them far-fetched and forced, they do not please them, so
the interpretations are wrong and the whole business of interpretation amounts
to nothing. No fleeting thought ever brushes the other possibility, that these
interpretations must appear as they are for good reasons, which would give rise
to the further question of what these good reasons might be.
The content thus judged generally relates to the results of displacement, with
which you have become acquainted as the strongest device of the dream censor.
It is with the help of displacements that the dream censor creates substitute-
formations which we have designated as allusions. But they are allusions which
are not easily recognized as such, and from which it is not easy to find one's
way back to the original and which are connected with this original by means
of the strangest, most unusual, most superficial associations. In all of these
cases, however, it is a question of matters which are to be hidden, which were
intended for concealment; this is what the dream censor aims to do. We must
not expect to find a thing that has been concealed in its accustomed place in the
spot where it belongs. In this respect the Commissions for the Surveillance of
Frontiers now in office are more cunning than the Swiss school authorities. In
their search for documents and maps they are not content to search through
portfolios and letter cases but they also take into account the possibility that
spies and smugglers might carry such severely proscribed articles in the most
concealed parts of their clothing, where they certainly do not belong, as for
example between the double soles of their boots. If the concealed objects are
found in such a place, they certainly are very far-fetched, but nevertheless they
have been "fetched."
If we recognize that the most remote, the most extraordinary associations
between the latent dream element and its manifest substitute are possible,
associations appearing ofttimes comical, ofttimes witty, we follow in so doing a
wealth of experience derived from examples whose solutions we have, as a
rule, not found ourselves. Often it is not possible to give such interpretations
from our own examples. No sane person could guess the requisite association.
The dreamer either gives us the translation with one stroke by means of his
immediate association—he can do this, for this substitute formation was
created by his mind—or he provides us with so much material that the solution
no longer demands any special astuteness but forces itself upon us as
inevitable. If the dreamer does not help us in either of these two ways, then
indeed the manifest element in question remains forever incomprehensible to
us. Allow me to give you one more such example of recent occurrence. One of
my patients lost her father during the time that she was undergoing treatment.
Since then she has made use of every opportunity to bring him back to life in
her dreams. In one of her dreams her father appears in a certain connection, of
no further importance here, and says, "It is a quarter past eleven, it is half past
eleven, it is quarter of twelve." All she can think of in connection with this
curious incident is the recollection that her father liked to see his grown-up
children appear punctually at the general meal hour. That very thing probably
had some connection with the dream element, but permitted of no conclusion as
to its source. Judging from the situation of the treatment at that time, there was
a justified suspicion that a carefully suppressed critical rebellion against her
loved and respected father played its part in this dream. Continuing her
associations, and apparently far afield from topics relevant to the dream, the
dreamer relates that yesterday many things of a psychological nature had been
discussed in her presence, and that a relative made the remark: "The cave man
(Urmensch) continues to live in all of us." Now we think we understand. That
gave her an excellent opportunity of picturing her father as continuing to live.
So in the dream she made of him a clockman (Uhrmensch) by having him
announce the quarter-hours at noon time.
You may not be able to disregard the similarity which this examples bears to
a pun, and it really has happened frequently that the dreamer's pun is attributed
to the interpreter. There are still other examples in which it is not at all easy to
decide whether one is dealing with a joke or a dream. But you will recall that
the same doubt confronted us when we were dealing with slips of the tongue. A
man tells us a dream of his, that his uncle, while they were sitting in the
latter's automobile, gave him a kiss. He very quickly supplies the interpretation
himself. It means "auto-eroticism," (a term taken from the study of the libido,
or love impulse, and designating satisfaction of that impulse without an
external object). Did this man permit himself to make fun of us and give out as
a dream a pun that occurred to him? I do not believe so; he really dreamed it.
Whence comes the astounding similarity? This question at one time led me
quite a ways from my path, by making it necessary for me to make a thorough
investigation of the problem of humor itself. By so doing I came to the
conclusion that the origin of wit lies in a foreconscious train of thought which
is left for a moment to unconscious manipulation, from which it then emerges
as a joke. Under the influence of the unconscious it experiences the workings of
the mechanisms there in force, namely, of condensation and displacement, that
is, of the same processes which we found active in the dream work, and it is to
this agreement that we are to ascribe the similarity between wit and the dream,
wherever it occurs. The unintentional "dream joke" has, however, none of the
pleasure-giving quality of the ordinary joke. Why that is so, greater penetration
into the study of wit may teach you. The "dream joke" seems a poor joke to us,
it does not make us laugh, it leaves us cold.
Here we are also following in the footsteps of ancient dream interpretation,
which has left us, in addition to much that is useless, many a good example of
dream interpretation we ourselves cannot surpass. I am now going to tell you a
dream of historical importance which Plutarch and Artemidorus of Daldis both
tell concerning Alexander the Great, with certain variations. When the King
was engaged in besieging the city of Tyre (322 B.C.), which was being
stubbornly defended, he once dreamed that he saw a dancing satyr. Aristandros,
his dream interpreter, who accompanied the army, interpreted this dream for
him by making of the word Satyros, σἁ Τὑρος, "Thine is Tyre," and thus
promising him a triumph over the city. Alexander allowed himself to be
influenced by this interpretation to continue the siege, and finally captured
Tyre. The interpretation, which seems artificial enough, was without doubt the
correct one.
3. I can imagine that it will make a special impression on you to hear that
objections to our conception of the dream have been raised also by persons
who, as psychoanalysts, have themselves been interested in the interpretation of
dreams. It would have been too extraordinary if so pregnant an opportunity for
new errors had remained unutilized, and thus, owing to comprehensible
confusions and unjustified generalizations, there have been assertions made
which, in point of incorrectness are not far behind the medical conception of
dreams. One of these you already know. It is the declaration that the dream is
occupied with the dreamer's attempts at adaptation to his present environment,
and attempts to solve future problems, in other words, that the dream follows a
"prospective tendency" (A. Maeder). We have already shown that this assertion
is based upon a confusion of the dream with the latent thoughts of the dream,
that as a premise it overlooks the existence of the dream-work. In
characterizing that psychic activity which is unconscious and to which the
latent thoughts of the dream belong, the above assertion is no novelty, nor is it
exhaustive, for this unconscious psychic activity occupies itself with many
other things besides preparation for the future. A much worse confusion seems
to underlie the assurance that back of every dream one finds the "death-clause,"
or death-wish. I am not quite certain what this formula is meant to indicate, but
I suppose that back of it is a confusion of the dream with the whole personality
of the dreamer.
An unjustified generalization, based on few good examples, is the
pronouncement that every dream permits of two interpretations, one such as we
have explained, the so-called psychoanalytic, and another, the so-called
anagogical or mystical, which ignores the instinctive impulses and aims at a
representation of the higher psychic functions (V. Silberer). There are such
dreams, but you will try in vain to extend this conception to even a majority of
the dreams. But after everything you have heard, the statement will seem very
incomprehensible that all dreams can be interpreted bisexually, that is, as the
concurrence of two tendencies which may be designated as male and female
(A. Adler). To be sure, there are a few such dreams, and you may learn later
that these are built up in the manner of certain hysterical symptoms. I mention
all these newly discovered general characteristics of the dream in order to warn
you against them or at least in order not to leave you in doubt as to how I judge
them.
4. At one time the objective value of dream research was called into question
by the observation that patients undergoing analysis accommodate the content
of their dreams to the favorite theories of their physicians, so that some dream
predominantly of sexual impulses, others of the desire for power and still others
even of rebirth (W. Stekel). The weight of this observation is diminished by the
consideration that people dreamed before there was such a thing as a
psychoanalytic treatment to influence their dreams, and that those who are now
undergoing treatment were also in the habit of dreaming before the treatment
was commenced. The meaning of this novel discovery can soon be recognized
as a matter of course and as of no consequence for the theory of the dream.
Those day-remnants which give rise to the dream are the overflow from the
strong interest of the waking life. If the remarks of the physician and the stimuli
which he gives have become significant to the patient under analysis, then they
become a part of the day's remnants, can serve as psychic stimuli for the
formation of a dream along with other, emotionally-charged, unsolved interests
of the day, and operate much as do the somatic stimuli which act upon the
sleeper during his sleep. Just like these other incitors of the dream, the
sequence of ideas which the physician sets in motion may appear in the
manifest content, or may be traced in the latent content of the dream. Indeed,
we know that one can produce dreams experimentally, or to speak more
accurately, one can insert into the dream a part of the dream material. Thus the
analyst in influencing his patients, merely plays the role of an experimenter in
the manner of Mourly Vold, who places the limbs of his subjects in certain
positions.
One can often influence the dreamer as to the subject-matter of his dream,
but one can never influence what he will dream about it. The mechanism of the
dream-work and the unconscious wish that is hidden in the dream are beyond
the reach of all foreign influences. We already realized, when we evaluated the
dreams caused by bodily stimuli, that the peculiarity and self-sufficiency of the
dream life shows itself in the reaction with which the dream retorts to the
bodily or physical stimuli which are presented. The statement here discussed,
which aims to throw doubt upon the objectivity of dream research, is again
based on a confusion—this time of the whole dream with the dream material.
This much, ladies and gentlemen, I wanted to tell you concerning the
problems of the dream. You will suspect that I have omitted a great deal, and
have yourselves discovered that I had to be inconclusive on almost all points.
But that is due to the relation which the phenomena of the dream have to those
of the neuroses. We studied the dream by way of introduction to the study of
the neuroses, and that was surely more correct than the reverse would have
been. But just as the dream prepares us for the understanding of the neuroses,
so in turn the correct evaluation of the dream can only be gained after a
knowledge of neurotic phenomena has been won.
I do not know what you will think about this, but I must assure you that I do
not regret having taken so much of your interest and of your available time for
the problems of the dream. There is no other field in which one can so quickly
become convinced of the correctness of the assertions by which psychoanalysis
stands or falls. It will take the strenuous labor of many months, even years, to
show that the symptoms in a case of neurotic break-down have their meaning,
serve a purpose, and result from the fortunes of the patient. On the other hand,
the efforts of a few hours suffice in proving the same content in a dream
product which at first seems incomprehensibly confused, and thereby to
confirm all the hypotheses of psychoanalysis, the unconsciousness of psychic
processes, the special mechanism which they follow, and the motive forces
which manifest themselves in them. And if we associate the thorough analogy
in the construction of the dream and the neurotic symptom with the rapidity of
transformation which makes of the dreamer an alert and reasonable individual,
we gain the certainty that the neurosis also is based only on a change in the
balance of the forces of psychic life.

III

GENERAL THEORY OF THE NEUROSES

SIXTEENTH LECTURE

GENERAL THEORY OF THE NEUROSES

Psychoanalysis and Psychiatry

IAM very glad to welcome you back to continue our discussions. I last
lectured to you on the psychoanalytic treatment of errors and of the dream. To-
day I should like to introduce you to an understanding of neurotic phenomena,
which, as you soon will discover, have much in common with both of those
topics. But I shall tell you in advance that I cannot leave you to take the same
attitude toward me that you had before. At that time I was anxious to take no
step without complete reference to your judgment. I discussed much with you, I
listened to your objections, in short, I deferred to you and to your "normal
common sense." That is no longer possible, and for a very simple reason. As
phenomena, the dream and errors were not strange to you. One might say that
you had as much experience as I, or that you could easily acquire as much. But
neuroses are foreign to you; since you are not doctors yourselves you have had
access to them only through what I have told you. Of what use is the best
judgment if it is not supported by familiarity with the material in question?
Do not, however, understand this as an announcement of dogmatic lectures
which demand your unconditional belief. That would be a gross
misunderstanding. I do not wish to convince you. I am out to stimulate your
interest and shake your prejudices. If, in consequence of not knowing the facts,
you are not in a position to judge, neither should you believe nor condemn.
Listen and allow yourselves to be influenced by what I tell you. One cannot be
so easily convinced; at least if he comes by convictions without effort, they
soon prove to be valueless and unable to hold their own. He only has a right to
conviction who has handled the same material for many years and who in so
doing has gone through the same new and surprising experiences again and
again. Why, in matters of intellect these lightning conversions, these
momentary repulsions? Do you not feel that a coup de foudre, that love at first
sight, originates in quite a different field, namely, in that of the emotions? We
do not even demand that our patients should become convinced of and
predisposed to psychoanalysis. When they do, they seem suspicious to us. The
attitude we prefer in them is one of benevolent scepticism. Will you not also try
to let the psychoanalytic conception develop in your mind beside the popular or
"psychiatric"? They will influence each other, mutually measure their strength,
and some day work themselves into a decision on your part.
On the other hand, you must not think for a moment that what I present to
you as the psychoanalytic conception is a purely speculative system. Indeed, it
is a sum total of experiences and observations, either their direct expression or
their elaboration. Whether this elaboration is done adequately and whether the
method is justifiable will be tested in the further progress of the science. After
two and a half decades, now that I am fairly advanced in years, I may say that it
was particularly difficult, intensive and all-absorbing work which yielded these
observations. I have often had the impression that our opponents were
unwilling to take into consideration this objective origin of our statements, as if
they thought it were only a question of subjective ideas arising haphazard, ideas
to which another may oppose his every passing whim. This antagonistic
behavior is not entirely comprehensible to me. Perhaps the physician's habit of
steering clear of his neurotic patients and listening so very casually to what
they have to say allows him to lose sight of the possibility of deriving anything
valuable from his patients' communications, and therefore, of making
penetrating observations on them. I take this opportunity of promising you that
I shall carry on little controversy in the course of my lectures, least of all with
individual controversialists. I have never been able to convince myself of the
truth of the saying that controversy is the father of all things. I believe that it
comes down to us from the Greek sophist philosophy and errs as does the latter
through the overvaluation of dialectics. To me, on the contrary, it seems as if
the so-called scientific criticism were on the whole unfruitful, quite apart from
the fact that it is almost always carried on in a most personal spirit. For my part,
up to a few years ago, I could even boast that I had entered into a regular
scientific dispute with only one scholar (Lowenfeld, of Munich). The end of
this was that we became friends and have remained friends to this day. But I
did not repeat this attempt for a long time, because I was not certain that the
outcome would be the same.
Now you will surely judge that so to reject the discussion of literature must
evidence stubborness, a very special obtuseness against objections, or, as the
kindly colloquialisms of science have it, "a complete personal bias." In answer,
I would say that should you attain to a conviction by such hard labor, you
would thereby derive a certain right to sustain it with some tenacity.
Furthermore, I should like to emphasize the fact that I have modified my views
on certain important points in the course of my researches, changed them and
replaced them by new ones, and that I naturally made a public statement of that
fact each time. What has been the result of this frankness? Some paid no
attention at all to my self-corrections and even to-day criticize me for assertions
which have long since ceased to have the same meaning for me. Others
reproach me for just this deviation, and on account of it declare me unreliable.
For is anyone who has changed his opinions several times still trustworthy; is
not his latest assertion, as well, open to error? At the same time he who holds
unswervingly to what he has once said, or cannot be made to give it up quickly
enough, is called stubborn and biased. In the face of these contradictory
criticisms, what else can one do but be himself and act according to his own
dictates? That is what I have decided to do, and I will not allow myself to be
restrained from modifying and adapting my theories as the progress of my
experience demands. In the basic ideas I have hitherto found nothing to change,
and I hope that such will continue to be the case.
Now I shall present to you the psychoanalytic conception of neurotic
manifestations. The natural thing for me to do is to connect them to the
phenomena we have previously treated, for the sake of their analogy as well as
their contrast. I will select as symptomatic an act of frequent occurrence in my
office hour. Of course, the analyst cannot do much for those who seek him in
his medical capacity, and lay the woes of a lifetime before him in fifteen
minutes. His deeper knowledge makes it difficult for him to deliver a snap
decision as do other physicians—"There is nothing wrong with you"—and to
give the advice, "Go to a watering-place for a while." One of our colleagues, in
answer to the question as to what he did with his office patients, said, shrugging
his shoulders, that he simply "fines them so many kronen for their mischief-
making." So it will not surprise you to hear that even in the case of very busy
analysts, the hours for consultation are not very crowded. I have had the
ordinary door between my waiting room and my office doubled and
strengthened by a covering of felt. The purpose of this little arrangement cannot
be doubted. Now it happens over and over again that people who are admitted
from my waiting room omit to close the door behind them; in fact, they almost
always leave both doors open. As soon as I have noticed this I insist rather
gruffly that he or she go back in order to rectify the omission, even though it be
an elegant gentleman or a lady in all her finery. This gives an impression of
misapplied pedantry. I have, in fact, occasionally discredited myself by such a
demand, since the individual concerned was one of those who cannot touch
even a door knob, and prefer as well to have their attendants spared this
contact. But most frequently I was right, for he who conducts himself in this
way, and leaves the door from the waiting room into the physician's
consultation room open, belongs to the rabble and deserves to be received
inhospitably. Do not, I beg you, defend him until you have heard what follows.
For the fact is that this negligence of the patient's only occurs when he has been
alone in the waiting room and so leaves an empty room behind him, never
when others, strangers, have been waiting with him. If that latter is the case, he
knows very well that it is in his interest not to be listened to while he is talking
to the physician, and never omits to close both the doors with care.
This omission of the patient's is so predetermined that it becomes neither
accidental nor meaningless, indeed, not even unimportant, for, as we shall see,
it throws light upon the relation of this patient to the physician. He is one of the
great number of those who seek authority, who want to be dazzled, intimidated.
Perhaps he had inquired by telephone as to what time he had best call, he had
prepared himself to come on a crowd of suppliants somewhat like those in front
of a branch milk station. He now enters an empty waiting room which is,
moreover, most modestly furnished, and he is disappointed. He must demand
reparation from the physician for the wasted respect that he had tendered him,
and so he omits to close the door between the reception room and the office. By
this, he means to say to the physician: "Oh, well, there is no one here anyway,
and probably no one will come as long as I am here." He would also be quite
unmannerly and supercilious during the consultation if his presumption were
not at once restrained by a sharp reminder.
You will find nothing in the analysis of this little symptomatic act which was
not previously known to you. That is to say, it asserts that this act is not
accidental, but has a motive, a meaning, a purpose, that it has its assignable
connections psychologically, and that it serves as a small indication of a more
important psychological process. But above all it implies that the process thus
intimated is not known to the consciousness of the individual in whom it takes
place, for none of the patients who left the two doors open would have admitted
that they meant by this omission to show me their contempt. Some could
probably recall a slight sense of disappointment at entering an empty waiting
room, but the connection between this impression and the symptomatic act
which followed—of these, his consciousness was surely not aware.
Now let us place, side by side with this small analysis of a symptomatic act,
an observation on a pathological case. I choose one which is fresh in my mind
and which can also be described with relative brevity. A certain measure of
minuteness of detail is unavoidable in any such account.
A young officer, home on a short leave of absence, asked me to see his
mother-in-law who, in spite of the happiest circumstances, was embittering her
own and her people's existence by a senseless idea. I am introduced to a well
preserved lady of fifty-three with pleasant, simple manners, who gives the
following account without any hesitation: She is most happily married and lives
in the country with her husband, who operates a large factory. She cannot say
enough for the kind thoughtfulness of her husband. They had married for love
thirty years ago, and since then there had never been a shadow, a quarrel or
cause for jealousy. Now, even though her two children are well married, the
husband and father does not yet want to retire, from a feeling of duty. A year
ago there happened the incredible thing, incomprehensible to herself as well.
She gave complete credence to an anonymous letter which accused her
excellent husband of having an affair with a young girl—and since then her
happiness is destroyed. The more detailed circumstances were somewhat as
follows: She had a chambermaid with whom she had perhaps too often
discussed intimate matters. This girl pursued another young woman with
positively malicious enmity because the latter had progressed so much further
in life, despite the fact that she was of no better origin. Instead of going into
domestic service, the girl had obtained a business training, had entered the
factory and in consequence of the short-handedness due to the drafting of the
clerks into the army had advanced to a good position. She now lives in the
factory itself, meets all the gentlemen socially, and is even addressed as "Miss."
The girl who had remained behind in life was of course ready to speak all
possible evil of her one-time schoolmate. One day our patient and her
chambermaid were talking of an old gentleman who had been visiting at the
house, and of whom it was known that he did not live with his wife, but kept
another woman as his mistress. She does not know how it happened that she
suddenly remarked, "That would be the most awful thing that could happen to
me, if I should ever hear that my good husband also had a mistress." The next
day she received an anonymous letter through the mail which, in a disguised
handwriting, carried this very communication which she had conjured up. She
concluded—it seems justifiably—that the letter was the handiwork of her
malignant chambermaid, for the letter named as the husband's mistress the self-
same woman whom the maid persecuted with her hatred. Our patient, in spite
of the fact that she immediately saw through the intrigue and had seen enough
in her town to know how little credence such cowardly denunciations deserve,
was nevertheless at once prostrated by the letter. She became dreadfully excited
and promptly sent for her husband in order to heap the bitterest reproaches
upon him. Her husband laughingly denied the accusation and did the best that
could be done. He called in the family physician, who was as well the doctor in
attendance at the factory, and the latter added his efforts to quiet the unhappy
woman. Their further procedure was also entirely reasonable. The
chambermaid was dismissed, but the pretended rival was not. Since then, the
patient claims she has repeatedly so far calmed herself as no longer to believe
the contents of the anonymous letter, but this relief was neither thoroughgoing
nor lasting. It was enough to hear the name of the young lady spoken or to meet
her on the street in order to precipitate a new attack of suspicion, pain and
reproach.
This, now, is the case history of this good woman. It does not need much
psychiatric experience to understand that her portrayal of her own case was, if
anything, rather too mild in contrast to other nervous patients. The picture, we
say, was dissimulated; in reality she had never overcome her belief in the
accusation of the anonymous letter.
Now what position does a psychiatrist take toward such a case? We already
know what he would do in the case of the symptomatic act of the patient who
does not close the doors to the waiting room. He declares it an accident without
psychological interest, with which he need not concern himself. But this
attitude cannot be maintained toward the pathological case of the jealous
woman. The symptomatic act seems no great matter, but the symptom itself
claims attention by reason of its gravity. It is bound up with intense subjective
suffering while objectively it threatens to break up a home; therefore its claim
to psychiatric interest cannot be put aside. The first endeavor of the psychiatrist
is to characterize the symptom by some distinctive feature. The idea with which
this woman torments herself cannot in itself be called nonsensical, for it does
happen that elderly married men have affairs with young girls. But there is
something else about it that is nonsensical and incredible. The patient has no
reason beyond the declaration in the anonymous letter to believe that her tender
and faithful husband belongs to this sort of married men, otherwise not
uncommon. She knows that this letter in itself carries no proof; she can
satisfactorily explain its origin; therefore she ought to be able to persuade
herself that she has no reason to be jealous. Indeed she does this, but in spite of
it she suffers every bit as much as she would if she acknowledged this jealousy
as fully justified. We are agreed to call ideas of this sort, which are inaccessible
to arguments based on logic or on facts, "obsessions." Thus the good lady
suffers from an "obsession of jealousy" that is surely a distinctive
characterization for this pathological case.
Having reached this first certainty, our psychiatric interest will have become
aroused. If we cannot do away with a delusion by taking reality into account, it
can hardly have arisen from reality. But the delusion, what is its origin? There
are delusions of the most widely varied content. Why is it that in our case the
content should be jealousy? In what types of persons are obsessions liable to
occur, and, in particular, obsessions of jealousy? We would like to turn to the
psychiatrist with such questions, but here he leaves us in the lurch. There is
only one of our queries which he heeds. He will examine the family history of
this woman and perhaps will give us the answer: "The people who develop
obsessions are those in whose families similar and other psychic disturbances
have repeatedly occurred." In other words, if this lady develops an obsession
she does so because she was predisposed to it by reason of her heredity. That is
certainly something, but is it all that we want to know? Is it all that was
effective in causing this breakdown? Shall we be content to assume that it is
immaterial, accidental and inexplicable why the obsession of jealousy develops
rather than any other? And may we also accept this sentence about the
dominance of the influence of heredity in its negative meaning, that is, that no
matter what experiences came to this human being she was predestined to
develop some kind of obsession? You will want to know why scientific
psychiatry will give no further explanation. And I reply, "He is a rascal who
gives more than he owns." The psychiatrist does not know of any path that
leads him further in the explanation of such a case. He must content himself
with the diagnosis and a prognosis which, despite a wealth of experience, is
uncertain.
Yet, can psychoanalysis do more at this point? Indeed yes! I hope to show
you that even in so inaccessible a case as this it can discover something which
makes the further understanding possible. May I ask you first to note the
apparently insignificant fact that the patient actually provoked the anonymous
letter which now supports her delusion. The day before, she announces to the
intriguing chambermaid that if her husband were to have an affair with a young
girl it would be the worst misfortune that could befall her. By so doing she
really gave the maid the idea of sending her the anonymous letter. The
obsession thus attains a certain independence from the letter; it existed in the
patient beforehand—perhaps as a dread; or was it a wish? Consider, moreover,
these additional details yielded by an analysis of only two hours. The patient
was indeed most helpful when, after telling her story, she was urged to
communicate her further thoughts, ideas and recollections. She declared that
nothing came to her mind, that she had already told everything. After two hours
the undertaking had really to be given up because she announced that she
already felt cured and was sure that the morbid idea would not return. Of
course, she said this because of this resistance and her fear of continuing the
analysis. In these two hours, however, she had let fall certain remarks which
made possible definite interpretation, indeed made it incontestable; and this
interpretation throws a clear light on the origin of her obsession of jealousy.
Namely, she herself was very much infatuated with a certain young man, the
very same son-in-law upon whose urging she had come to consult me
professionally. She knew nothing of this infatuation, or at least only a very
little. Because of the existing relationship, it was very easy for this infatuation
to masquerade under the guise of harmless tenderness. With all our further
experience it is not difficult to feel our way toward an understanding of the
psychic life of this honest woman and good mother. Such an infatuation, a
monstrous, impossible thing, could not be allowed to become conscious. But it
continued to exist and unconsciously exerted a heavy pressure. Something had
to happen, some sort of relief had to be found and the mechanism of
displacement which so constantly takes part in the origin of obsessional
jealousy offered the most immediate mitigation. If not only she, old woman that
she was, was in love with a young man but if also her old husband had an affair
with a young girl, then she would be freed from the voice of her conscience
which accused her of infidelity. The phantasy of her husband's infidelity was
thus like a cooling salve on her burning wound. Of her own love she never
became conscious, but the reflection of it, which would bring her such
advantages, now became compulsive, obsessional and conscious. Naturally all
arguments directed against the obsession were of no avail since they
were directed only to the reflection, and not to the original force to which it
owed its strength and which, unimpeachable, lay buried in the unconscious.
Let us now piece together these fragments to see what a short and impeded
psychoanalysis can nevertheless contribute to the understanding of this case. It
is assumed of course that our inquiries were carefully conducted, a point which
I cannot at this place submit to your judgment. In the first place, the obsession
becomes no longer nonsensical nor incomprehensible, it is full of meaning,
well motivated and an integral part of the patient's emotional experience.
Secondly, it is a necessary reaction toward an unconscious psychological
process, revealed in other ways, and it is to this very circumstance that it owes
its obsessional nature, that is, its resistance to arguments based on logic or fact.
In itself the obsession is something wished for, a kind of consolation. Finally,
the experiences underlying the condition are such as unmistakably determine an
obsession of jealousy and no other. You will also recognize the part played by
the two important analogies in the analysis of the symptomatic act with
reference to its meaning and intent and also to its relation to an unconscious
factor in the situation.
Naturally, we have not yet answered all the questions which may be put on
the basis of this case. Rather the case bristles with further problems of a kind
which we have not yet been able to solve in any way, and of others which could
not be solved because of the disadvantage of the circumstances under which we
were working. For example: why is this happily married woman open to an
infatuation for her son-in-law, and why does the relief which could have been
obtained in other ways come to her by way of this mirror-image, this projection
of her own condition upon her husband? I trust you will not think that it is idle
and wanton to open such problems. Already we have much material at our
disposal for their possible solution. This woman is in that critical age when her
sexual needs undergo a sudden and unwelcome exaggeration. This might in
itself be sufficient. In addition, her good and faithful mate may for many years
have been lacking in that sufficient sexual capacity which the well-preserved
woman needs for her satisfaction. We have learned by experience to know that
those very men whose faithfulness is thus placed beyond a doubt are most
gentle in their treatment of their wives and unusually forbearing toward their
nervous complaints. Furthermore, the fact that it was just the young husband of
a daughter who became the object of her abnormal infatuation is by no means
insignificant. A strong erotic attachment to the daughter, which in the last
analysis leads back to the mother's sexual constitution, will often find a way to
live on under such a disguise. May I perhaps remind you in this connection that
the relationship between mother and son-in-law has seemed particularly
delicate since all time and is one which among primitive peoples gave rise to
very powerful taboos and avoidances.[37] It often transgresses our cultural
standards positively as well as negatively. I cannot tell you of course which of
these three factors were at work in our case; whether two of them only, or
whether all of them coöperated, for as you know I did not have the opportunity
to continue the analysis beyond two hours.
I realize at this point, ladies and gentlemen, that I have been speaking
entirely of things for which your understanding was not prepared. I did this in
order to carry through the comparison of psychiatry and psychoanalysis. May I
now ask one thing of you? Have you noticed any contradiction between them?
Psychiatry does not apply the technical methods of psychoanalysis, and
neglects to look for any significance in the content of the obsession. Instead of
first seeking out more specific and immediate causes, psychiatry refers us to the
very general and remote source—heredity. But does this imply a contradiction,
a conflict between them? Do they not rather supplement one another? For does
the hereditary factor deny the significance of the experience, is it not rather true
that both operate together in the most effective way? You must admit that there
is nothing in the nature of psychiatric work which must repudiate
psychoanalytic research. Therefore, it is the psychiatrists who oppose
psychoanalysis, not psychiatry itself. Psychoanalysis stands in about the same
relation to psychiatry as does histology to anatomy. The one studies the outer
forms of organs, the other the closer structure of tissues and cells. A
contradiction between two types of study, where one simplifies the other, is not
easily conceivable. You know that anatomy to-day forms the basis of scientific
medicine, but there was a time when the dissection of human corpses to learn
the inner structure of the body was as much frowned upon as the practice of
psychoanalysis, which seeks to ascertain the inner workings of the human soul,
seems proscribed to-day. And presumably a not too distant time will bring us to
the realization that a psychiatry which aspires to scientific depth is not possible
without a real knowledge of the deeper unconscious processes in the psychic
life.
 Perhaps this much-attacked psychoanalysis has now found some friends
among you who are anxious to see it justify itself as well from another aspect,
namely, the therapeutic side. You know that the therapy of psychiatry has
hitherto not been able to influence obsessions. Can psychoanalysis perhaps do
so, thanks to its insight into the mechanism of these symptoms? No, ladies and
gentlemen, it cannot; for the present at least it is just as powerless in the face of
these maladies as every other therapy. We can understand what it was that
happened within the patient, but we have no means of making the patient
himself understand this. In fact, I told you that I could not extend the analysis
of the obsession beyond the first steps. Would you therefore assert that analysis
is objectionable in such cases because it remains without result? I think not. We
have the right, indeed we have the duty to pursue scientific research without
regard to an immediate practical effect. Some day, though we do not know
when or where, every little scrap of knowledge will have been translated into
skill, even into therapeutic skill. If psychoanalysis were as unsuccessful in all
other forms of nervous and psychological disease as it is in the case of the
obsession, it would nevertheless remain fully justified as an irreplaceable
method of scientific research. It is true that we would then not be in a position
to practice it, for the human subjects from which we must learn, live and will in
their own right; they must have motives of their own in order to assist in the
work, but they would deny themselves to us. Therefore let me conclude this
session by telling you that there are comprehensive groups of nervous diseases
concerning which our better understanding has actually been translated into
therapeutic power; moreover, that in disturbances which are most difficult to
reach we can under certain conditions secure results which are second to none
in the field of internal therapeutics.

SEVENTEENTH LECTURE

GENERAL THEORY OF THE NEUROSES

The Meaning of the Symptoms

IN the last lecture I explained to you that clinical psychiatry concerns itself
very little with the form under which the symptoms appear or with the burden
they carry, but that it is precisely here that psychoanalysis steps in and shows
that the symptom carries a meaning and is connected with the experience of the
patient. The meaning of neurotic symptoms was first discovered by J. Breuer in
the study and felicitous cure of a case of hysteria which has since become
famous (1880-82). It is true that P. Janet independently reached the same result;
literary priority must in fact be accorded to the French scholar, since Breuer
published his observations more than a decade later (1893-95) during his period
of collaboration with me. On the whole it may be of small importance to us
who is responsible for this discovery, for you know that every discovery is
made more than once, that none is made all at once, and that success is not
meted out according to deserts. America is not named after Columbus. Before
Breuer and Janet, the great psychiatrist Leuret expressed the opinion that even
for the deliria of the insane, if we only understood how to interpret them, a
meaning could be found. I confess that for a considerable period of time I was
willing to estimate very highly the credit due to P. Janet in the explanation of
neurotic symptoms, because he saw in them the expression of subconscious
ideas (idées inconscientes) with which the patients were obsessed. But since
then Janet has expressed himself most conservatively, as though he wanted to
confess that the term "subconscious" had been for him nothing more than a
mode of speech, a shift, "une façon de parler," by the use of which he had
nothing definite in mind. I now no longer understand Janet's discussions, but I
believe that he has needlessly deprived himself of high credit.
The neurotic symptoms then have their meaning just like errors and the
dream, and like these they are related to the lives of the persons in whom they
appear. The importance of this insight into the nature of the symptom can best
be brought home to you by way of examples. That it is borne out always and in
all cases, I can only assert, not prove. He who gathers his own experience will
be convinced of it. For certain reasons, however, I shall draw my instances not
from hysteria, but from another fundamentally related and very curious
neurosis concerning which I wish to say a few introductory words to you. This
so-called compulsion neurosis is not so popular as the widely known hysteria; it
is, if I may use the expression, not so noisily ostentatious, behaves more as a
private concern of the patient, renounces bodily manifestations almost entirely
and creates all its symptoms psychologically. Compulsion neurosis and hysteria
are those forms of neurotic disease by the study of which psychoanalysis has
been built up, and in whose treatment as well the therapy celebrates its
triumphs. Of these the compulsion neurosis, which does not take that
mysterious leap from the psychic to the physical, has through psychoanalytic
research become more intimately comprehensible and transparent to us than
hysteria, and we have come to understand that it reveals far more vividly
certain extreme characteristics of the neuroses.
The chief manifestations of compulsion neurosis are these: the patient is
occupied by thoughts that in reality do not interest him, is moved by impulses
that appear alien to him, and is impelled to actions which, to be sure, afford him
no pleasure, but the performance of which he cannot possibly resist. The
thoughts may be absurd in themselves or thoroughly indifferent to the
individual, often they are absolutely childish and in all cases they are the result
of strained thinking, which exhausts the patient, who surrenders himself to
them most unwillingly. Against his will he is forced to brood and speculate as
though it were a matter of life or death to him. The impulses, which the patient
feels within himself, may also give a childish or ridiculous impression, but for
the most part they bear the terrifying aspect of temptations to fearful crimes, so
that the patient not only denies them, but flees from them in horror and protects
himself from actual execution of his desires through inhibitory renunciations
and restrictions upon his personal liberty. As a matter of fact he never, not a
single time, carries any of these impulses into effect; the result is always that
his evasion and precaution triumph. The patient really carries out only very
harmless trivial acts, so-called compulsive acts, for the most part repetitions
and ceremonious additions to the occupations of every-day life, through which
its necessary performances—going to bed, washing, dressing, walking—
become long-winded problems of almost insuperable difficulty. The abnormal
ideas, impulses and actions are in nowise equally potent in individual forms
and cases of compulsion neurosis; it is the rule, rather, that one or the other of
these manifestations is the dominating factor and gives the name to the disease;
that all these forms, however, have a great deal in common is quite undeniable.
Surely this means violent suffering. I believe that the wildest psychiatric
phantasy could not have succeeded in deriving anything comparable, and if one
did not actually see it every day, one could hardly bring oneself to believe it.
Do not think, however, that you give the patient any help when you coax him to
divert himself, to put aside these stupid ideas and to set himself to something
useful in the place of his whimsical occupations. This is just what he would like
of his own accord, for he possesses all his senses, shares your opinion of his
compulsion symptoms, in fact volunteers it quite readily. But he cannot do
otherwise; whatever activities actually are released under compulsion neurosis
are carried along by a driving energy, such as is probably never met with in
normal psychic life. He has only one remedy—to transfer and change. In place
of one stupid idea he can think of a somewhat milder absurdity, he can proceed
from one precaution and prohibition to another, or carry through another
ceremonial. He may shift, but he cannot annul the compulsion. One of the chief
characteristics of the sickness is the instability of the symptoms; they can be
shifted very far from their original form. It is moreover striking that the
contrasts present in all psychological experience are so very sharply drawn in
this condition. In addition to the compulsion of positive and negative content,
an intellectual doubt makes itself felt that gradually attacks the most ordinary
and assured certainties. All these things merge into steadily increasing
uncertainty, lack of energy, curtailment of personal liberty, despite the fact that
the patient suffering from compulsion neurosis is originally a most energetic
character, often of extraordinary obstinacy, as a rule intellectually gifted above
the average. For the most part he has attained a desirable stage of ethical
development, is overconscientious and more than usually correct. You can
imagine that it takes no inconsiderable piece of work to find one's way through
this maze of contradictory characteristics and symptoms. Indeed, for the present
our only object is to understand and to interpret some symptoms of this disease.
Perhaps in reference to our previous discussions, you would like to know the
position of present-day psychiatry to the problems of the compulsion neurosis.
This is covered in a very slim chapter. Psychiatry gives names to the various
forms of compulsion, but says nothing further concerning them. Instead it
emphasizes the fact that those who show these symptoms are degenerates. That
yields slight satisfaction, it is an ethical judgment, a condemnation rather than
an explanation. We are led to suppose that it is in the unsound that all these
peculiarities may be found. Now we do believe that persons who develop such
symptoms must differ fundamentally from other people. But we would like to
ask, are they more "degenerate" than other nervous patients, those suffering, for
instance, from hysteria or other diseases of the mind? The characterization is
obviously too general. One may even doubt whether it is at all justified, when
one learns that such symptoms occur in excellent men and women of especially
great and universally recognized ability. In general we glean very little intimate
knowledge of the great men who serve us as models. This is due both to their
own discretion and to the lying propensities of their biographers. Sometimes,
however, a man is a fanatic disciple of truth, such as Emile Zola, and then we
hear from him the strange compulsion habits from which he suffered all his life.
[38]
Psychiatry has resorted to the expedient of speaking of "superior
degenerates." Very well—but through psychoanalysis we have learned that
these peculiar compulsion symptoms may be permanently removed just like
any other disease of normal persons. I myself have frequently succeeded in
doing this.
I will give you two examples only of the analysis of compulsion symptoms,
one, an old observation, which cannot be replaced by anything more complete,
and one a recent study. I am limiting myself to such a small number because in
an account of this nature it is necessary to be very explicit and to enter into
every detail.
A lady about thirty years old suffered from the most severe compulsions. I
might indeed have helped her if caprice of fortune had not destroyed my work
—perhaps I will yet have occasion to tell you about it. In the course of each day
the patient often executed, among others, the following strange compulsive act.
She ran from her room into an adjoining one, placed herself in a definite spot
beside a table which stood in the middle of the room, rang for her maid, gave
her a trivial errand to do, or dismissed her without more ado, and then ran back
again. This was certainly not a severe symptom of disease, but it still deserved
to arouse curiosity. Its explanation was found, absolutely without any
assistance on the part of the physician, in the very simplest way, a way to
which no one can take exception. I hardly know how I alone could have
guessed the meaning of this compulsive act, or have found any suggestion
toward its interpretation. As often as I had asked the patient: "Why do you do
this? Of what use is it?" she had answered, "I don't know." But one day after I
had succeeded in surmounting a grave ethical doubt of hers she suddenly saw
the light and related the history of the compulsive act. More than ten years prior
she had married a man far older than herself, who had proved impotent on the
bridal night. Countless times during the night he had run from his room to hers
to repeat the attempt, but each time without success. In the morning he said
angrily: "It is enough to make one ashamed before the maid who does the
beds," and took a bottle of red ink that happened to be in the room, and poured
its contents on the sheet, but not on the place where such a stain would have
been justifiable. At first I did not understand the connection between this
reminiscence and the compulsive act in question, for the only agreement I
could find between them was in the running from one room into another,—
possibly also in the appearance of the maid. Then the patient led me to the table
in the second room and let me discover a large spot on the cover. She explained
also that she placed herself at the table in such a way that the maid could not
miss seeing the stain. Now it was no longer possible to doubt the intimate
relation of the scene after her bridal night and her present compulsive act, but
there were still a number of things to be learned about it.
In the first place, it is obvious that the patient identifies herself with her
husband, she is acting his part in her imitation of his running from one room
into the other. We must then admit—if she holds to this role—that she replaces
the bed and sheet by table and cover. This may seem arbitrary, but we have not
studied dream symbolism in vain. In dreams also a table which must be
interpreted as a bed, is frequently seen. "Bed and board" together represent
married life, one may therefore easily be used to represent the other.
The evidence that the compulsive act carries meaning would thus be plain; it
appears as a representation, a repetition of the original significant scene.
However, we are not forced to stop at this semblance of a solution; when we
examine more closely the relation between these two people, we shall probably
be enlightened concerning something of wider importance, namely, the purpose
of the compulsive act. The nucleus of this purpose is evidently the summoning
of the maid; to her she wishes to show the stain and refute her husband's
remark: "It is enough to shame one before the maid." He—whose part she is
playing—therefore feels no shame before the maid, hence the stain must be in
the right place. So we see that she has not merely repeated the scene, rather she
has amplified it, corrected it and "turned it to the good." Thereby, however, she
also corrects something else,—the thing which was so embarrassing that night
and necessitated the use of the red ink—impotence. The compulsive act then
says: "No, it is not true, he did not have to be ashamed before the maid, he was
not impotent." After the manner of a dream she represents the fulfillment of
this wish in an overt action, she is ruled by the desire to help her husband over
that unfortunate incident.
Everything else that I could tell you about this case supports this clue more
specifically; all that we otherwise know about her tends to strengthen this
interpretation of a compulsive act incomprehensible in itself. For years the
woman has lived separated from her husband and is struggling with the
intention to obtain a legal divorce. But she is by no means free from him; she
forces herself to remain faithful to him, she retires from the world to avoid
temptation; in her imagination she excuses and idealizes him. The deepest
secret of her malady is that by means of it she shields her husband from
malicious gossip, justifies her separation from him, and renders possible for
him a comfortable separate life. Thus the analysis of a harmless compulsive act
leads to the very heart of this case and at the same time reveals no
inconsiderable portion of the secret of the compulsion neurosis in general. I
shall be glad to have you dwell upon this instance, as it combines conditions
that one can scarcely demand in other cases. The interpretation of the
symptoms was discovered by the patient herself in one flash, without the
suggestion or interference of the analyst. It came about by the reference to an
experience, which did not, as is usually the case, belong to the half-forgotten
period of childhood, but to the mature life of the patient, in whose memory it
had remained unobliterated. All the objections which critics ordinarily offer to
our interpretation of symptoms fail in this case. Of course, we are not always so
fortunate.
And one thing more! Have you not observed how this insignificant
compulsive act initiated us into the intimate life of the invalid? A woman can
scarcely relate anything more intimate than the story of her bridal night, and is
it without further significance that we just happened to come on the intimacies
of her sexual life? It might of course be the result of the selection I have made
in this instance. Let us not judge too quickly and turn our attention to the
second instance, one of an entirely different kind, a sample of a frequently
occurring variety, namely, the sleep ritual.
A nineteen-year old, well-developed, gifted girl, an only child, who was
superior to her parents in education and intellectual activity, had been wild and
mischievous in her childhood, but has become very nervous during the last
years without any apparent outward cause. She is especially irritable with her
mother, always discontented, depressed, has a tendency toward indecision and
doubt, and is finally forced to confess that she can no longer walk alone on
public squares or wide thoroughfares. We shall not consider at length her
complicated condition, which requires at least two diagnoses—agoraphobia and
compulsion neurosis. We will dwell only upon the fact that this girl has also
developed a sleep ritual, under which she allows her parents to suffer much
discomfort. In a certain sense, we may say that every normal person has a sleep
ritual, in other words that he insists on certain conditions, the absence of which
hinders him from falling asleep; he has created certain observances by which he
bridges the transition from waking to sleeping and these he repeats every
evening in the same manner. But everything that the healthy person demands in
order to obtain sleep is easily understandable and, above all, when external
conditions necessitate a change, he adapts himself easily and without loss of
time. But the pathological ritual is rigid, it persists by virtue of the greatest
sacrifices, it also masks itself with a reasonable justification and seems, in the
light of superficial observation, to differ from the normal only by exaggerated
pedantry. But under closer observation we notice that the mask is transparent,
for the ritual covers intentions that go far beyond this reasonable justification,
and other intentions as well that are in direct contradiction to this reasonable
justification. Our patient cites as the motive of her nightly precautions that she
must have quiet in order to sleep; therefore she excludes all sources of noise.
To accomplish this, she does two things: the large clock in her room is stopped,
all other clocks are removed; not even the wrist watch on her night-table is
suffered to remain. Flowerpots and vases are placed on her desk so that they
cannot fall down during the night, and in breaking disturb her sleep. She knows
that these precautions are scarcely justifiable for the sake of quiet; the ticking
of the small watch could not be heard even if it should remain on the night-
table, and moreover we all know that the regular ticking of a clock is conducive
to sleep rather than disturbing. She does admit that there is not the least
probability that flowerpots and vases left in place might of their own accord fall
and break during the night. She drops the pretense of quiet for the other
practice of this sleep ritual. She seems on the contrary to release a source of
disturbing noises by the demand that the door between her own room and that
of her parents remain half open, and she insures this condition by placing
various objects in front of the open door. The most important observances
concern the bed itself. The large pillow at the head of the bed may not touch the
wooden back of the bed. The small pillow for her head must lie on the large
pillow to form a rhomb; she then places her head exactly upon the diagonal of
the rhomb. Before covering herself, the featherbed must be shaken so that its
foot end becomes quite flat, but she never omits to press this down and
redistribute the thickness.
 Allow me to pass over the other trivial incidents of this ritual; they would
teach us nothing new and cause too great digression from our purpose. Do not
overlook, however, the fact that all this does not run its course quite smoothly.
Everything is pervaded by the anxiety that things have not been done properly;
they must be examined, repeated. Her doubts seize first on one, then on another
precaution, and the result is that one or two hours elapse during which the girl
cannot and the intimidated parents dare not sleep.
These torments were not so easily analyzed as the compulsive act of our
former patient. In the working out of the interpretations I had to hint and
suggest to the girl, and was met on her part either by positive denial or mocking
doubt. This first reaction of denial, however, was followed by a time when she
occupied herself of her own accord with the possibilities that had been
suggested, noted the associations they called out, produced reminiscences, and
established connections, until through her own efforts she had reached and
accepted all interpretations. In so far as she did this, she desisted as well from
the performance of her compulsive rules, and even before the treatment had
ended she had given up the entire ritual. You must also know that the nature of
present-day analysis by no means enables us to follow out each individual
symptom until its meaning becomes clear. Rather it is necessary to abandon a
given theme again and again, yet with the certainty that we will be led back to
it in some other connection. The interpretation of the symptoms in this case,
which I am about to give you, is a synthesis of results, which, with the
interruptions of other work, needed weeks and months for their compilation.
Our patient gradually learns to understand that she has banished clocks and
watches from her room during the night because the clock is the symbol of the
female genital. The clock, which we have learned to interpret as a symbol for
other things also, receives this role of the genital organ through its relation to
periodic occurrences at equal intervals. A woman may for instance be found to
boast that her menstruation is as regular as clockwork. The special fear of our
patient, however, was that the ticking of the clock would disturb her in her
sleep. The ticking of the clock may be compared to the throbbing of the clitoris
during sexual excitement. Frequently she had actually been awakened by this
painful sensation and now this fear of an erection of the clitoris caused her to
remove all ticking clocks during the night. Flowerpots and vases are, as are all
vessels, also female symbols. The precaution, therefore, that they should not
fall and break at night, was not without meaning. We know the widespread
custom of breaking a plate or dish when an engagement is celebrated. The
fragment of which each guest possesses himself symbolizes his renunciation of
his claim to the bride, a renunciation which we may assume as based on the
monogamous marriage law. Furthermore, to this part of her ceremonial our
patient adds a reminiscence and several associations. As a child she had slipped
once and fallen with a bowl of glass or clay, had cut her finger, and bled
violently. As she grew up and learned the facts of sexual intercourse, she
developed the fear that she might not bleed during her bridal night and so not
prove to be a virgin. Her precaution against the breaking of vases was a
rejection of the entire virginity complex, including the bleeding connected with
the first cohabitation. She rejected both the fear to bleed and the contradictory
fear not to bleed. Indeed her precautions had very little to do with a prevention
of noise.
One day she guessed the central idea of her ceremonial, when she suddenly
understood her rule not to let the pillow come in contact with the bed. The
pillows always had seemed a woman to her, the erect back of the bed a man. By
means of magic, we may say, she wished to keep apart man and wife; it was her
parents she wished to separate, so to prevent their marital intercourse. She had
sought to attain the same end by more direct methods in earlier years, before
the institution of her ceremonial. She had simulated fear or exploited a genuine
timidity in order to keep open the door between the parents' bedroom and the
nursery. This demand had been retained in her present ceremonial. Thus she
had gained the opportunity of overhearing her parents, a proceeding which at
one time subjected her to months of sleeplessness. Not content with this
disturbance to her parents, she was at that time occasionally able to gain her
point and sleep between father and mother in their very bed. Then "pillow" and
"wooden wall" could really not come in contact. Finally when she became so
big that her presence between the parents could not longer be borne
comfortably, she consciously simulated fear and actually succeeded in
changing places with her mother and taking her place at her father's side. This
situation was undoubtedly the starting point for the phantasies, whose after-
effects made themselves felt in her ritual.
If a pillow represented a woman, then the shaking of the featherbed till all the
feathers were lumped at one end, rounding it into a prominence, must have its
meaning also. It meant the impregnation of the wife; the ceremonial, however,
never failed to provide for the annulment, of this pregnancy by the flattening
down of the feathers. Indeed, for years our patient had feared that the
intercourse between her parents might result in another child which would be
her rival. Now, where the large pillow represents a woman, the mother, then the
small pillow could be nothing but the daughter. Why did this pillow have to be
placed so as to form a rhomb; and why did the girl's head have to rest exactly
upon the diagonal? It was easy to remind the patient that the rhomb on all walls
is the rune used to represent the open female genital. She herself then played
the part of the man, the father, and her head took the place of the male organ.
(Cf. the symbol of beheading to represent castration.)
 Wild ideas, you will say, to run riot in the head of a virgin girl. I admit it, but
do not forget that I have not created these ideas but merely interpreted them. A
sleep ritual of this kind is itself very strange, and you cannot deny the
correspondence between the ritual and the phantasies that yielded us the
interpretation. For my part I am most anxious that you observe in this
connection that no single phantasy was projected in the ceremonial, but a
number of them had to be integrated,—they must have their nodal points
somewhere in space. Observe also that the observance of the ritual reproduce
the sexual desire now positively, now negatively, and serve in part as their
rejection, again as their representation.
It would be possible to make a better analysis of this ritual by relating it to
other symptoms of the patient. But we cannot digress in that direction. Let the
suggestion suffice that the girl is subject to an erotic attachment to her father,
the beginning of which goes back to her earliest childhood. That perhaps is the
reason for her unfriendly attitude toward her mother. Also we cannot escape the
fact that the analysis of this symptom again points to the sexual life of the
patient. The more we penetrate to the meaning and purpose of neurotic
symptoms, the less surprising will this seem to us.
By means of two selected illustrations I have demonstrated to you that
neurotic symptoms carry just as much meaning as do errors and the dream, and
that they are intimately connected with the experience of the patient. Can I
expect you to believe this vitally significant statement on the strength of two
examples? No. But can you expect me to cite further illustrations until you
declare yourself convinced? That too is impossible, since considering the
explicitness with which I treat each individual case, I would require a five-hour
full semester course for the explanation of this one point in the theory of the
neuroses. I must content myself then with having given you one proof for my
assertion and refer you for the rest to the literature of the subject, above all to
the classical interpretation of symptoms in Breuer's first case (hysteria) as well
as to the striking clarification of obscure symptoms in the so-called dementia
praecox by C. G. Jung, dating from the time when this scholar was still content
to be a mere psychoanalyst—and did not yet want to be a prophet; and to all the
articles that have subsequently appeared in our periodicals. It is precisely
investigations of this sort which are plentiful. Psychoanalysts have felt
themselves so much attracted by the analysis, interpretation and translation of
neurotic symptoms, that by contrast they seem temporarily to have neglected
other problems of neurosis.
Whoever among you takes the trouble to look into the matter will
undoubtedly be deeply impressed by the wealth of evidential material. But he
will also encounter difficulties. We have learned that the meaning of a
symptom is found in its relation to the experience of the patient. The more
highly individualized the symptom is, the sooner we may hope to establish
these relations. Therefore the task resolves itself specifically into the discovery
for every nonsensical idea and useless action of a past situation wherein the
idea had been justified and the action purposeful. A perfect example for this
kind of symptom is the compulsive act of our patient who ran to the table and
rangfor the maid. But there are symptoms of a very different nature which are
by no means rare. They must be called typical symptoms of the disease, for
they are approximately alike in all cases, in which the individual differences
disappear or shrivel to such an extent that it is difficult to connect them with the
specific experiences of the patient and to relate them to the particular situations
of his past. Let us again direct our attention to the compulsion neurosis. The
sleep ritual of our second patient is already quite typical, but bears enough
individual features to render possible what may be called
an historic interpretation. But all compulsive patients tend to repeat, to isolate
their actions from others and to subject them to a rhythmic sequence. Most of
them wash too much. Agoraphobia (topophobia, fear of spaces), a malady
which is no longer grouped with the compulsion neurosis, but is now called
anxiety hysteria, invariably shows the same pathological picture; it repeats with
exhausting monotony the same feature, the patient's fear of closed spaces, of
large open squares, of long stretched streets and parkways, and their feeling of
safety when acquaintances accompany them, when a carriage drives after them,
etc. On this identical groundwork, however, the individual differences between
the patients are superimposed—moods one might almost call them, which are
sharply contrasted in the various cases. The one fears only narrow streets, the
other only wide ones, the one can go out walking only when there are few
people abroad, the other when there are many. Hysteria also, aside from its
wealth of individual features, has a superfluity of common typical symptoms
that appear to resist any facile historical methods of tracing them. But do not let
us forget that it is by these typical symptoms that we get our bearings in
reaching a diagnosis. When, in one case of hysteria we have finally traced back
a typical symptom to an experience or a series of similar experiences, for
instance followed back an hysterical vomiting to its origin in a succession of
disgust impressions, another case of vomiting will confuse us by revealing an
entirely different chain of experiences, seemingly just as effective. It seems
almost as though hysterical patients must vomit for some reason as yet
unknown, and that the historic factors, revealed by analysis, are chance
pretexts, seized on as opportunity best offered to serve the purposes of a deeper
need.
Thus we soon reach the discouraging conclusion that although we can
satisfactorily explain the individual neurotic symptom by relating it to an
experience, our science fails us when it comes to the typical symptoms that
occur far more frequently. In addition, remember that I am not going into all
the detailed difficulties which come up in the course of resolutely hunting down
an historic interpretation of the symptom. I have no intention of doing this, for
though I want to keep nothing from you, and so paint everything in its true
colors, I still do not wish to confuse and discourage you at the very outset of
our studies. It is true that we have only begun to understand the interpretation
of symptoms, but we wish to hold fast to the results we have achieved, and
struggle forward step by step toward the mastery of the still unintelligible data.
I therefore try to cheer you with the thought that a fundamental between the
two kinds of symptoms can scarcely be assumed. Since the individual
symptoms are so obviously dependent upon the experience of the patient, there
is a possibility that the typical symptoms revert to an experience that is in itself
typical and common to all humanity. Other regularly recurring features of
neurosis, such as the repetition and doubt of the compulsion neurosis, may be
universal reactions which are forced upon the patient by the very nature of the
abnormal change. In short, we have no reason to be prematurely discouraged;
we shall see what our further results will yield.
We meet a very similar difficulty in the theory of dreams, which in our
previous discussion of the dream I could not go into. The manifest content of
dreams is most profuse and individually varied, and I have shown very
explicitly what analysis may glean from this content. But side by side with
these dreams there are others which may also be termed "typical" and which
occur similarly in all people. These are dreams of identical content which offer
the same difficulties for their interpretation as the typical symptom. They are
the dreams of falling, flying, floating, swimming, of being hemmed in, of
nakedness, and various other anxiety dreams that yield first one and then
another interpretation for the different patients, without resulting in an
explanation of their monotonous and typical recurrence. In the matter of these
dreams also, we see a fundamental groundwork enriched by individual
additions. Probably they as well can be fitted into the theory of dream life, built
up on the basis of other dreams,—not however by straining the point, but by the
gradual broadening of our views.

EIGHTEENTH LECTURE

GENERAL THEORY OF THE NEUROSES

Traumatic Fixation—The Unconscious

ISAID last time that we would not continue our work from the standpoint of
our doubts, but on the basis of our results. We have not even touched upon two
of the most interesting conclusions, derived equally from the same two sample
analyses.
In the first place, both patients give us the impression of being fixated upon
some very definite part of their past; they are unable to free themselves
therefrom, and have therefore come to be completely estranged both from the
present and the future. They are now isolated in their ailment, just as in earlier
days people withdrew into monasteries there to carry along the burden of their
unhappy fates. In the case of the first patient, it is her marriage with her
husband, really abandoned, that has determined her lot. By means of her
symptoms she continues to deal with her husband; we have learned to
understand those voices which plead his case, which excuse him, exalt him,
lament his loss. Although she is young and might be coveted by other men, she
has seized upon all manner of real and imaginary (magic) precautions to
safeguard her virtue for him. She will not appear before strangers, she neglects
her personal appearance; furthermore, she cannot bring herself to get up readily
from any chair on which she has been seated. She refuses to give her signature,
and finally, since she is motivated by her desire not to let anyone have anything
of hers, she is unable to give presents.
In the case of the second patient, the young girl, it is an erotic attachment for
her father that had established itself in the years prior to puberty, which plays
the same role in her life. She also has arrived at the conclusion that she may not
marry so long as she is sick. We may suspect she became ill in order that she
need not marry, and that she might stay with her father.
It is impossible to evade the question of how, in what manner, and driven by
what motives, an individual may come by such a remarkable and unprofitable
attitude toward life. Granted of course that this bearing is a general
characteristic of neurosis, and not a special peculiarity of these two cases, it is
nevertheless a general trait in every neurosis of very great importance in
practice. Breuer's first hysterical patient was fixated in the same manner upon
the time when she nursed her very sick father. In spite of her recuperation she
has, in certain respects, since that time, been done with life; although she
remained healthy and able, she did not enter on the normal life of women. In
every one of our patients we may see, by the use of analysis, that in his disease-
symptoms and their results he has gone back again into a definite period of his
past. In the majority of cases he even chooses a very early phase of his life,
sometime a childhood phase, indeed, laughable as it may appear, a phase of his
very suckling existence.
 The closest analogies to these conditions of our neurotics are furnished by
the types of sickness which the war has just now made so frequent—the so-
called traumatic neuroses. Even before the war there were such cases after
railroad collisions and other frightful occurrences which endangered life. The
traumatic neuroses are, fundamentally, not the same as the spontaneous
neuroses which we have been analysing and treating; moreover, we have not
yet succeeded in bringing them within our hypotheses, and I hope to be able to
make clear to you wherein this limitation lies. Yet on one point we may
emphasize the existence of a complete agreement between the two forms. The
traumatic neuroses show clear indications that they are grounded in a fixation
upon the moment of the traumatic disaster. In their dreams these patients
regularly live over the traumatic situation; where there are attacks of an
hysterical type, which permit of an analysis, we learn that the attack
approximates a complete transposition into this situation. It is as if these
patients had not yet gotten through with the traumatic situation, as if it were
actually before them as a task which was not yet mastered. We take this view of
the matter in all seriousness; it shows the way to an economic view of psychic
occurrences. For the expression "traumatic" has no other than an economic
meaning, and the disturbance permanently attacks the management of available
energy. The traumatic experience is one which, in a very short space of time, is
able to increase the strength of a given stimulus so enormously that its
assimilation, or rather its elaboration, can no longer be effected by normal
means.
This analogy tempts us to classify as traumatic those experiences as well
upon which our neurotics appear to be fixated. Thus the possibility is held out
to us of having found a simple determining factor for the neurosis. It would
then be comparable to a traumatic disease, and would arise from the inability to
meet an overpowering emotional experience. As a matter of fact this reads like
the first formula, by which Breuer and I, in 1893-1895, accounted theoretically
for our new observations. A case such as that of our first patient, the young
woman separated from her husband, is very well explained by this conception.
She was not able to get over the unfeasibility of her marriage, and has not been
able to extricate herself from this trauma. But our very next, that of the girl
attached to her father, shows us that the formula is not sufficiently
comprehensive. On the one hand, such baby love of a little girl for her father is
so usual, and so often outlived that the designation "traumatic" would carry no
significance; on the other hand, the history of the patient teaches us that this
first erotic fixation apparently passed by harmlessly at the time, and did not
again appear until many years later in the symptoms of the compulsion
neurosis. We see complications before us, the existence of a greater wealth of
determining factors in the disease, but we also suspect that the traumatic
viewpoint will not have to be given up as wrong; rather it will have to
subordinate itself when it is fitted into a different context.
Here again we must leave the road we have been traveling. For the time
being, it leads us no further and we have many other things to find out before
we can go on again. But before we leave this subject let us note that the fixation
on some particular phase of the past has bearings which extend far beyond the
neurosis. Every neurosis contains such a fixation, but every fixation does not
lead to a neurosis, nor fall into the same class with neuroses, nor even set the
conditions for the development of a neurosis. Mourning is a type of emotional
fixation on a theory of the past, which also brings with it the most
complete alienation from the present and the future. But mourning is sharply
distinguished from neuroses that may be designated as pathological forms of
mourning.
It also happens that men are brought to complete deadlock by a traumatic
experience that has so completely shaken the foundations on which they have
built their lives that they give up all interest in the present and future, and
become completely absorbed in their retrospections; but these unhappy persons
are not necessarily neurotic. We must not overestimate this one feature as a
diagnostic for a neurosis, no matter how invariable and potent it may be.
Now let us turn to the second conclusion of our analysis, which however we
will hardly need to limit subsequently. We have spoken of the senseless
compulsive activities of our first patient, and what intimate memories she
disclosed as belonging to them; later we also investigated the connection
between experience and symptom and thus discovered the purpose hidden
behind the compulsive activity. But we have entirely omitted one factor that
deserves our whole attention. As long as the patient kept repeating the
compulsive activity she did not know that it was in any way related with the
experience in question. The connection between the two was hidden from her,
she truthfully answered that she did not know what compelled her to do this.
Once, suddenly, under the influence of the cure, she hit upon the connection
and was able to tell it to us. But still she did not know of the end in the service
of which she performed the compulsive activities, the purpose to correct a
painful part of the past and to place the husband, still loved by her, upon a
higher level. It took quite a long time and a great deal of trouble for her to grasp
and admit to me that such a motive alone could have been the motive force of
the compulsive activity.
The relation between the scene after the unhappy bridal night and the tender
motive of the patient yield what we have called the meaning of the compulsive
activity. But both the "whence" and the "why" remained hidden from her as
long as she continued to carry out the compulsive act. Psychological processes
had been going on within her for which the compulsive act found an
expression. She could, in a normal frame of mind, observe their effect, but none
of the psychological antecedents of her action had come to the knowledge of
her consciousness. She had acted in just the same manner as a hypnotized
person to whom Bernheim had given the injunction that five minutes after his
awakening in the ward he was to open an umbrella, and he had carried out this
order on awakening, but could give no motive for his so doing. We have
exactly such facts in mind when we speak of the existence of unconscious
psychological processes. Let anyone in the world account for these facts in a
more correct scientific manner, and we will gladly withdraw completely our
assumption of unconscious psychological processes. Until then, however, we
shall continue to use this assumption, and when anyone wants to bring forward
the objection that the unconscious can have no reality for science and is a mere
makeshift, (une façon de parler), we must simply shrug our shoulders and
reject his incomprehensible statement resignedly. A strange unreality which can
call out such real and palpable effects as a compulsion symptom!
In our second patient we meet with fundamentally the same thing. She had
created a decree which she must follow: the pillow must not touch the head of
the bed; yet she does not know how it originated, what its meaning is, nor to
what motive it owes the source of its power. It is immaterial whether she looks
upon it with indifference or struggles against it, storms against it, determines to
overcome it. She must nevertheless follow it and carry out its ordinance, though
she asks herself, in vain, why. One must admit that these symptoms of
compulsion neurosis offer the clearest evidence for a special sphere of
psychological activity, cut off from the rest. What else could be back of these
images and impulses, which appear from one knows not where, which have
such great resistance to all the influences of an otherwise normal psychic life;
which give the patient himself the impression that here are super-powerful
guests from another world, immortals mixing in the affairs of mortals. Neurotic
symptoms lead unmistakably to a conviction of the existence of an unconscious
psychology, and for that very reason clinical psychiatry, which recognizes only
a conscious psychology, has no explanation other than that they are present as
indications of a particular kind of degeneration. To be sure, the compulsive
images and impulses are not themselves unconscious—no more so than the
carrying out of the compulsive-acts escapes conscious observation. They would
not have been symptoms had they not penetrated through into consciousness.
But their psychological antecedents as disclosed by the analysis, the
associations into which we place them by our interpretations, are unconscious,
at least until we have made them known to the patient during the course of the
analysis.
Consider now, in addition, that the facts established in our two cases are
confirmed in all the symptoms of all neurotic diseases, that always and
everywhere the meaning of the symptoms is unknown to the sufferer, that
analysis shows without fail that these symptoms are derivatives of unconscious
experiences which can, under various favorable conditions, become conscious.
You will understand then that in psychoanalysis we cannot do without this
unconscious psyche, and are accustomed to deal with it as with something
tangible. Perhaps you will also be able to understand how those who know the
unconscious only as an idea, who have never analyzed, never interpreted
dreams, or never translated neurotic symptoms into meaning and purpose, are
most ill-suited to pass an opinion on this subject. Let us express our point of
view once more. Our ability to give meaning to neurotic symptoms by means of
analytic interpretation is an irrefutable indication of the existence of
unconscious psychological processes—or, if you prefer, an irrefutable proof of
the necessity for their assumption.
But that is not all. Thanks to a second discovery of Breuer's, for which he
alone deserves credit and which appears to me to be even more far-reaching,
we are able to learn still more concerning the relationship between the
unconscious and the neurotic symptom. Not alone is the meaning of the
symptoms invariably hidden in the unconscious; but the very existence of the
symptom is conditioned by its relation to this unconscious. You will soon
understand me. With Breuer I maintain the following: Every time we hit upon a
symptom we may conclude that the patient cherishes definite unconscious
experiences which withhold the meaning of the symptoms. Vice versa, in order
that the symptoms may come into being, it is also essential that this meaning be
unconscious. Symptoms are not built up out of conscious experiences; as soon
as the unconscious processes in question become conscious, the symptom
disappears. You will at once recognize here the approach to our therapy, a
way to make symptoms disappear. It was by these means that Breuer actually
achieved the recovery of his patient, that is, freed her of her symptoms; he
found a technique for bringing into her consciousness the unconscious
experiences that carried the meaning of her symptoms, and the symptoms
disappeared.
This discovery of Breuer's was not the result of a speculation, but of a
felicitous observation made possible by the coöperation of the patient. You
should therefore not trouble yourself to find things you already know to which
you can compare these occurrences, rather you should recognize herein a new
fundamental fact which in itself is capable of much wider application. Toward
this further end permit me to go over this ground again in a different way.
The symptom develops as a substitution for something else that has remained
suppressed. Certain psychological experiences should normally have become
so far elaborated that consciousness would have attained knowledge of them.
This did not take place, however, but out of these interrupted and disturbed
processes, imprisoned in the unconscious, the symptom arose. That is to say,
something in the nature of an interchange had been effected; as often as
therapeutic measures are successful in again reversing this transposition,
psychoanalytic therapy solves the problem of the neurotic symptom.
Accordingly, Breuer's discovery still remains the foundation of
psychoanalytic therapy. The assertion that the symptoms disappear when one
has made their unconscious connections conscious, has been borne out by all
subsequent research, although the most extraordinary and unexpected
complications have been met with in its practical execution. Our therapy does
its work by means of changing the unconscious into the conscious, and is
effective only in so far as it has the opportunity of bringing about this
transformation.
Now we shall make a hasty digression so that you do not by any chance
imagine that this therapeutic work is too easy. From all we have learned so far,
the neurosis would appear as the result of a sort of ignorance, the incognizance
of psychological processes that we should know of. We would thus very
closely approximate the well-known Socratic teachings, according to which
evil itself is the result of ignorance. Now the experienced physician will, as a
rule, discover fairly readily what psychic impulses in his several patients have
remained unconscious. Accordingly it would seem easy for him to cure the
patient by imparting this knowledge to him and freeing him of his ignorance.
At least the part played by the unconscious meaning of the symptoms could
easily be discovered in this manner, and it would only be in dealing with the
relationship of the symptoms to the experiences of the patient that the physician
would be handicapped. In the face of these experiences, of course, he is the
ignorant one of the two, for he did not go through these experiences, and must
wait until the patient remembers them and tells them to him. But in many cases
this difficulty could be readily overcome. One can question the relatives of the
patient concerning these experiences, and they will often be in a position to
point out those that carry any traumatic significance; they may even be able to
inform the analyst of experiences of which the patient knows nothing because
they occurred in the very early years of his life. By a combination of such
means it would seem that the pathogenic ignorance of the patient could be
cleared up in a short time and without much trouble.
If only that were all! We have made discoveries for which we were at first
unprepared. Knowing and knowing is not always the same thing; there are
various kinds of knowing that are psychologically by no means comparable. "Il
y a fagots et fagots,"[39] as Molière says. The knowledge of the physician is not
the same as that of the patient and cannot bring about the same results. The
physician can gain no results by transferring his knowledge to the patient in so
many words. This is perhaps putting it incorrectly, for though the transference
does not result in dissolving the symptoms, it does set the analysis in motion,
and calls out an energetic denial, the first sign usually that this has taken place.
The patient has learned something that he did not know up to that time, the
meaning of his symptoms, and yet he knows it as little as before. So we
discover there is more than one kind of ignorance. It will require a deepening of
our psychological insight to make clear to us wherein the difference lies. But
our assertion nevertheless remains true that the symptoms disappear with the
knowledge of their meaning. For there is only one limiting condition; the
knowledge must be founded on an inner change in the patient which can be
attained only through psychic labors directed toward a definite end. We have
here been confronted by problems which will soon lead us to the elaboration of
a dynamics of symptom formation.
I must stop to ask you whether this is not all too vague and too complicated?
Do I not confuse you by so often retracting my words and restricting them,
spinning out trains of thought and then rejecting them? I should be sorry if this
were the case. However, I strongly dislike simplification at the expense of
truth, and am not averse to having you receive the full impression of how
many-sided and complicated the subject is. I also think that there is no harm
done if I say more on every point than you can at the moment make use of. I
know that every hearer and reader arranges what is offered him in his own
thoughts, shortens it, simplifies it and extracts what he wishes to retain. Within
a given measure it is true that the more we begin with the more we have left.
Let me hope that, despite all the by-play, you have clearly grasped the essential
parts of my remarks, those about the meaning of symptoms, about the
unconscious, and the relation between the two. You probably have also
understood that our further efforts are to take two directions: first, the clinical
problem—to discover how persons become sick, how they later on accomplish
a neurotic adaptation toward life; secondly, a problem of psychic dynamics, the
evolution of the neurotic symptoms themselves from the prerequisites of the
neuroses. We will undoubtedly somewhere come on a point of contact for these
two problems.
I do not wish to go any further to-day, but since our time is not yet up I
intend to call your attention to another characteristic of our two analyses,
namely, the memory gaps or amnesias, whose full appreciation will be possible
later. You have heard that it is possible to express the object of psychoanalytic
treatment in a formula: all pathogenic unconscious experience must be
transposed into consciousness. You will perhaps be surprised to learn that this
formula can be replaced by another: all the memory gaps of the patient must be
filled out, his amnesias must be abolished. Practically this amounts to the same
thing. Therefore an important role in the development of his symptoms must be
accredited to the amnesias of the neurotic. The analysis of our first case,
however, will hardly justify this valuation of the amnesia. The patient has not
forgotten the scene from which the compulsion act derives—on the contrary,
she remembers it vividly, nor is there any other forgotten factor which comes
into play in the development of these symptoms. Less clear, but entirely
analogous, is the situation in the case of our second patient, the girl with the
compulsive ritual. She, too, has not really forgotten the behavior of her early
years, the fact that she insisted that the door between her bedroom and that of
her parents be kept open, and that she banished her mother out of her place in
her parents' bed. She recalls all this very clearly, although hesitatingly and
unwillingly. Only one factor stands out strikingly in our first case, that though
the patient carries out her compulsive act innumerable times, she is not once
reminded of its similarity with the experience after the bridal-night; nor was
this memory even suggested when by direct questions she was asked to search
for its motivation. The same is true of the girl, for in her case not only her
ritual, but the situation which provoked it, is repeated identically night after
night. In neither case is there any actual amnesia, no lapse of memory, but an
association is broken off which should have called out a reproduction, a revival
in the memory. Such a disturbance is enough to bring on a compulsion
neurosis. Hysteria, however, shows a different picture, for it is usually
characterized by most grandiose amnesias. As a rule, in the analysis of each
hysterical symptom, one is led back to a whole chain of impressions which,
upon their recovery, are expressly designated as forgotten up to the moment.
On the one hand this chain extends back to the earliest years of life, so that the
hysterical amnesias may be regarded as the direct continuation of the infantile
amnesias, which hides the beginnings of our psychic life from those of us who
are normal. On the other hand, we discover with surprise that the most recent
experiences of the patient are blurred by these losses of memory—that
especially the provocations which favored or brought on the illness are, if not
entirely wiped out by the amnesia, at least partially obliterated. Without fail
important details have disappeared from the general picture of such a recent
memory, or are placed by false memories. Indeed it happens almost regularly
that just before the completion of an analysis, certain memories of recent
experiences suddenly come to light. They had been held back all this time, and
had left noticeable gaps in the context.
We have pointed out that such a crippling of the ability to recall is
characteristic of hysteria. In hysteria symptomatic conditions also arise
(hysterical attacks) which need leave no trace in the memory. If these things do
not occur in compulsion-neuroses, you are justified in concluding that these
amnesias exhibit psychological characteristics of the hysterical change, and not
a general trait of the neuroses. The significance of this difference will be more
closely limited by the following observations. We have combined two things as
the meaning of a symptom, its "whence," on the one hand, and its "whither" or
"why," on the other. By these we mean to indicate the impressions and
experiences whence the symptom arises, and the purpose the symptom serves.
The "whence" of a symptom is traced back to impressions which have come
from without, which have therefore necessarily been conscious at some time,
but which may have sunk into the unconscious—that is, have been forgotten.
The "why" of the symptom, its tendency, is in every case an endopsychic
process, developed from within, which may or may not have become conscious
at first, but could just as readily never have entered consciousness at all and
have been unconscious from its inception. It is, after all, not so very significant
that, as happens in the hysterias, amnesia has covered over the "whence" of the
symptom, the experience upon which it is based; for it is the "why," the
tendency of the symptom, which establishes its dependence on the unconscious,
and indeed no less so in the compulsion neuroses than in hysteria. In both cases
the "why" may have been unconscious from the very first.
By thus bringing into prominence the unconscious in psychic life, we have
raised the most evil spirits of criticism against psychoanalysis. Do not be
surprised at this, and do not believe that the opposition is directed only against
the difficulties offered by the conception of the unconscious or against the
relative inaccessibility of the experiences which represent it. I believe it comes
from another source. Humanity, in the course of time, has had to endure from
the hands of science two great outrages against its naive self-love. The first was
when humanity discovered that our earth was not the center of the universe, but
only a tiny speck in a world-system hardly conceivable in its magnitude. This is
associated in our minds with the name "Copernicus," although Alexandrian
science had taught much the same thing. The second occurred when biological
research robbed man of his apparent superiority under special creation, and
rebuked him with his descent from the animal kingdom, and his ineradicable
animal nature. This re-valuation, under the influence of Charles Darwin,
Wallace and their predecessors, was not accomplished without the most violent
opposition of their contemporaries. But the third and most irritating insult is
flung at the human mania of greatness by present-day psychological research,
which wants to prove to the "I" that it is not even master in its own home, but is
dependent upon the most scanty information concerning all that goes on
unconsciously in its psychic life. We psychoanalysts were neither the first, nor
the only ones to announce this admonition to look within ourselves. It appears
that we are fated to represent it most insistently and to confirm it by means of
empirical data which are of importance to every single person. This is the
reason for the widespread revolt against our science, the omission of all
considerations of academic urbanity, and emancipation of the opposition from
all restraints of impartial logic. We were compelled to disturb the peace of the
world, in addition, in another manner, of which you will soon come to know.

NINETEENTH LECTURE

GENERAL THEORY OF THE NEUROSES

Resistance and Suppression

IN order to progress in our understanding of the neuroses, we need new

experiences and we are about to obtain two. Both are very remarkable and were
at the time of their discovery, very surprising. You are, of course, prepared for
both from our discussions of the past semester.
In the first place: When we undertake to cure a patient, to free him from the
symptoms of his malady, he confronts us with a vigorous, tenacious resistance
that lasts during the whole time of the treatment. That is so peculiar a fact that
we cannot expect much credence for it. The best thing is not to mention this
fact to the patient's relatives, for they never think of it otherwise than as a
subterfuge on our part in order to excuse the length or the failure of our
treatment. The patient, moreover, produces all the phenomena of this resistance
without even recognizing it as such; it is always a great advance to have
brought him to the point of understanding this conception and reckoning with
it. Just consider, this patient suffers from his symptoms and causes those about
him to suffer with him. He is willing, moreover, to take upon himself so many
sacrifices of time, money, effort and self-denial in order to be freed. And yet he
struggles, in the very interests of his malady, against one who would help him.
How improbable this assertion must sound! And yet it is so, and if we are
reproached with its improbability, we need only answer that this fact is not
without its analogies. Whoever goes to a dentist with an unbearable toothache
may very well find himself thrusting away the dentist's arm when the man
makes for his sick tooth with a pair of pincers.
The resistance which the patient shows is highly varied, exceedingly subtle,
often difficult to recognize, Protean-like in its manifold changes of form. It
means that the doctor must become suspicious and be constantly on his guard
against the patient. In psychoanalytic therapy we make use, as you know, of
that technique which is already familiar to you from the interpretation of
dreams. We tell the patient that without further reflection he should put himself
into a condition of calm self-observation and that he must then communicate
whatever results this introspection gives him—feelings, thoughts,
reminiscences, in the order in which they appear to his mind. At the same time,
we warn him expressly against yielding to any motive which would induce him
to choose or exclude any of his thoughts as they arise, in whatever way the
motive may be couched and however it may excuse him from telling us the
thought: "that is too unpleasant," or "too indiscreet" for him to tell; or "it is too
unimportant," or "it does not belong here," "it is nonsensical." We impress
upon him the fact that he must skim only across the surface of his
consciousness and must drop the last vestige of a critical attitude toward that
which he finds. We finally inform him that the result of the treatment and
above all its length is dependent on the conscientiousness with which he
follows this basic rule of the analytic technique. We know, in fact, from the
technique of interpreting dreams, that of all the random notions which may
occur, those against which such doubts are raised are invariably the ones to
yield the material which leads to the uncovering of the unconscious.
The first reaction we call out by laying down this basic technical rule is that
the patient directs his entire resistance against it. The patient tries in every way
to escape its requirements. First he will declare that he cannot think of
anything, then, that so much comes to his mind that it is impossible to seize on
anything definite. Then we discover with no slight displeasure that he has
yielded to this or that critical objection, for he betrays himself by the long
pauses which he allows to occur in his speaking. He then confesses that he
really cannot bring himself to this, that he is ashamed to; he prefers to let this
motive get the upper hand over his promise. He may say that he did think of
something but that it concerns someone else and is for that reason exempt. Or
he says that what he just thought of is really too trivial, too stupid and too
foolish. I surely could not have meant that he should take such thoughts into
account. Thus it goes on, with untold variations, in the face of which
we continually reiterate that "telling everything" really means telling
everything.
One can scarcely find a patient who does not make the attempt to reserve
some province for himself against the intrusion of the analysis. One patient,
whom I must reckon among the most highly intelligent, thus concealed an
intimate love relation for weeks; and when he was asked to explain this
infringement of our inviolable rule, he defended his action with the argument
that he considered this one thing was his private affair. Naturally, analytic
treatment cannot countenance such right of sanctuary. One might as well try in
a city like Vienna to allow an exception to be made of great public squares like
the Hohe Markt or the Stephans Platz and say that no one should be arrested in
those places—and then attempt to round up some particular wrong-doer. He
will be found nowhere but in those sanctuaries. I once brought myself around to
permit such an exception in the case of a man on whose capacity for work a
great deal depended, and who was bound by his oath of service, which forbade
him to tell anyone of certain things. To be sure, he was satisfied with the results
—but not I; I resolved never to repeat such an attempt under these conditions.
Compulsion neurotics are exceedingly adept at making this technical rule
almost useless by bringing to bear all their over-conscientiousness and their
doubts upon it. Patients suffering from anxiety-hysteria sometimes succeed in
reducing it to absurdity by producing only notions so remote from the thing
sought for that analysis is quite unprofitable. But it is not my intention to go
into the way in which these technical difficulties may be met. It is enough to
know that finally, by means of resolution and perseverance, we do succeed in
wresting a certain amount of obedience from the patient toward this basic rule
of the technique; the resistance then makes itself felt in other ways. It appears
in the form of an intellectual resistance, battles by means of arguments, and
makes use of all difficulties and improbabilities which a normal yet
uninstructed thinking is bound to find in the theory of analysis. Then we hear
from one voice alone the same criticisms and objections which thunder about
us in mighty chorus in the scientific literature. Therefore the critics who shout
to us from outside cannot tell us anything new. It is a veritable tempest in a
teapot. Still the patient can be argued with, he is anxious to persuade us to
instruct him, to teach him, to lead him to the literature, so that he may continue
working things out for himself. He is very ready to become an adherent of
psychoanalysis on condition that analysis spare him personally. But we
recognize this curiosity as a resistance, as a diversion from our special objects,
and we meet it accordingly. In those patients who suffer from compulsion
neuroses, we must expect the resistance to display special tactics. They
frequently allow the analysis to take its way, so that it may succeed in throwing
more and more light on the problems of the case, but we finally begin to
wonder how it is that this clearing up brings with it no practical progress, no
diminution of the symptom. Then we may discover that the resistance has
entrenched itself in the doubts of the compulsion neurosis itself and in this
position is able successfully to resist our efforts. The patient has said something
like this to himself: "This is all very nice and interesting. And I would be glad
to continue it. It would affect my malady considerably if it were true. But I
don't believe that it is true and as long as I don't believe it, it has nothing to do
with my sickness." And so it may go on for a long time until one finally has
shaken this position itself; it is then that the decisive battle takes place.
The intellectual resistances are not the worst, one can always get ahead of
them. But the patient can also put up resistances, within the limits of the
analysis, whose conquest belongs to the most difficult tasks of our technique.
Instead of recalling, he actually goes again through the attitudes and emotions
of his previous life which, by means of the so-called "transference," can be
utilized as resistances to the physician and the treatment. If the patient is a man,
he takes this material as a rule from his relations to his father, in whose place
he now puts the physician, and in so doing constructs a resistance out of his
struggle for independence of person and opinion; out of his ambition to equal
or to excel his father; out of his unwillingness to assume the burden of gratitude
a second time in his life. For long times at a stretch one receives the impression
that the patient desires to put the physician in the wrong and to let him feel his
helplessness by triumphing over him, and that this desire has completely
replaced his better intention of making an end to his sickness. Women are
adepts at exploiting, for the purposes of the resistance, a tender, erotically
tinged transference to the physician. When this leaning attains a certain
intensity, all interest for the actual situation of the treatment is lost, together
with every sense of the responsibility which was assumed by undertaking it.
The never-failing jealousy as well as the embitterment over the inevitable
repudiation, however gently effected, all must serve to spoil the personal
understanding between patient and physician and thus to throw out one of the
most powerful propelling forces of the analysis.
Resistances of this sort must not be narrow-mindedly condemned. They
contain so much of the most important material of the patient's past and
reproduce it in such a convincing manner, that they become of the greatest aid
to the analysis, if a skillful technique is able to turn them in the right direction.
It is only remarkable that this material is at first always in the service of the
resistance, for which it serves as a barrier against the treatment. One can also
say that here are traits of character, adjustments of the ego which were
mobilized in order to defeat the attempted change. We are thus able to learn
how these traits arose under the conditions of the neurosis, as a reaction to its
demands, and to see features more clearly in this character which could
otherwise not have shown up so clearly or at least not to this extent, and which
one may therefore designate as latent. You must also not get the impression that
we see an unforeseen endangering of the analytic influence in the appearance of
these resistances. On the contrary, we know that these resistances must come to
light; we are dissatisfied only when we do not provoke them in their full
strength and so make them plain to the patient Indeed, we at last understand
that overcoming these resistances is the essential achievement of analysis and is
that portion of the work which alone assures us that we have accomplished
something with the patient.
You must also take into account the fact that any accidental occurrences
which arise during the treatment will be made use of by the patient as a
disturbance—every diverting incident, every statement about analysis from an
inimical authority in his circle, any chance illness or any organic affection
which complicates the neurosis; indeed, he even uses every improvement of his
condition as a motive for abating his efforts. You will then have gained an
approximate, though still an incomplete picture of the forms and devices of the
resistance which must be met and overcome in the course of every analysis. I
have given this point such detailed consideration because I am about to inform
you that our dynamic conception of the neurosis is based on this experience
with the resistance of neurotic patients against the banishment of their
symptoms. Breuer and I both originally practiced psycho-therapy by means of
hypnosis. Breuer's first patient was treated throughout under a condition of
hypnotic suggestibility, and I at first followed his example. I admit that my
work at that time progressed easily and agreeably and also took much less time.
But the results were capricious and not permanent; therefore I finally gave up
hypnotism. Then only did I realize that no insight into the forces which produce
these diseases was possible as long as one used hypnotism. The condition of
hypnosis could prevent the physician from realizing the existence of a
resistance. Hypnosis drives back the resistance and frees a certain field for the
work of analysis, but similarly to the doubt in the compulsion neurosis, in so
doing it clogs the boundaries of this field till they become impenetrable. That is
why I can say that true psychoanalysis began when the help of hypnotism was
renounced.
But if the establishment of the resistance thus becomes a matter of such
importance, then surely we must give our caution full rein, and follow up any
doubts as to whether we are not all too ready in our assumption of their
existence. Perhaps there really are neurotic cases in which associations appear
for other reasons, perhaps the arguments against our hypothesis really deserve
more consideration and we are unjustified in conveniently rejecting all
intellectual criticisms of analysis as a resistance. Indeed, ladies and gentlemen,
but our judgment was by no means readily arrived at. We had opportunity to
observe every critical patient from the first sign of the resistance till after its
disappearance. In the course of the treatment, the resistance is moreover
constantly changing in intensity. It is always on the increase as we approach a
new theme, is strongest at the height of its elaboration, and dies down again
when this theme has been abandoned. Furthermore, unless we have made some
unusual and awkward technical error, we never have to deal with the full
measure of resistance of which the patient is capable. We could therefore
convince ourselves that the same man took up and discarded his critical attitude
innumerable times in the course of the analysis. Whenever we are on the point
of bringing before his consciousness some piece of unconscious material which
is especially painful to him, then he is critical in the extreme. Even though he
had previously understood and accepted a great deal, nevertheless all record of
these gains seems now to have been wiped out. He may, in his desire to resist at
any cost, present a picture of veritable emotional feeblemindedness. If one
succeeds in helping him to overcome this new resistance, then he regains his
insight and his understanding. Thus his criticism is not an independent function
to be respected as such; it plays the role of handy-man to his emotional attitude
and is guided by his resistance. If something displeases him, he can defend
himself against it very ingeniously and appear most critical. But if something
strikes his fancy, then he may show himself easily convinced. Perhaps none of
us are very different, and the patient under analysis shows this dependence of
the intellect on the emotional life so plainly only because, under the analysis,
he is so hard pressed.
In what way shall we now account for the observation that the patient so
energetically resists our attempts to rid him of his symptoms and to make his
psychic processes function in a normal way? We tell ourselves that we have
here come up against strong forces which oppose any change in the condition;
furthermore, that these forces must be identical with those which originally
brought about the condition. Some process must have been functional in the
building up of these symptoms, a process which we can now reconstruct by
means of our experiences in solving the meaning of the symptoms. We already
know from Breuer's observations that the existence of a symptom presupposes
that some psychic process was not carried to its normal conclusion, so that it
could not become conscious. The symptom is the substitute for that which did
not take place. Now we know where the forces whose existence we suspect
must operate. Some violent antagonism must have been aroused to prevent the
psychic process in question from reaching consciousness, and it therefore
remained unconscious. As an unconscious thought it had the power to create a
symptom. The same struggle during the analytic treatment opposes anew the
efforts to carry this unconscious thought over into consciousness. This process
we felt as a resistance. That pathogenic process which is made evident to us
through the resistance, we will name repression.
We are now ready to obtain a more definite idea of this process of repression.
It is the preliminary condition for the formation of symptoms; it is also a thing
for which we have no parallel. If we take as prototype an impulse, a
psychological process which is striving to convert itself into action, we know
that it may succumb before a rejection, which we call "repudiation" or
"condemnation." In the course of this struggle, the energy which the impulse
had at its disposal was withdrawn from it, it becomes powerless; yet it may
subsist in the form of a memory. The whole process of decision occurs with the
full knowledge of the ego. The state of affairs is very different if we imagine
that this same impulse has been subjected to repression. In that case, it would
retain its energy and there would be no memory of it left; in addition, the
process of repression would be carried out without the knowledge of the ego.
Through this comparison, however, we have come no nearer understanding the
nature of repression.
I now go into the theoretical ideas which alone have shown themselves
useful in making the conception of repression more definite. It is above all
necessary that we progress from a purely descriptive meaning of the word
"unconscious" to its more systematic meaning; that is, we come to a point
where we must call the consciousness or unconsciousness of a psychic process
only one of its attributes, an attribute which is, moreover, not necessarily
unequivocal. If such a process remained unconscious, then this separation from
consciousness is perhaps only an indication of the fate to which it has
submitted and not this fate itself. To bring this home to us more vividly, let us
assume that every psychological process—with one exception, which I will go
into later—first exists in an unconscious state or phase and only goes over from
this into a conscious phase, much as a photographic picture is first a negative
and then becomes a picture by being printed. But not every negative need
become a positive, and just as little is it necessary that every unconscious
psychological process should be changed into a conscious one. We find it
advantageous to express ourselves as follows: Any particular process belongs
in the first place to the psychological system of the unconscious; from this
system it can under certain conditions go over into the system of the conscious.
The crudest conception of these systems is the one which is most convenient
for us, namely, a representation in space. We will compare the system of the
unconscious to a large ante-chamber, in which the psychic impulses rub elbows
with one another, as separate beings. There opens out of this ante-chamber
another, a smaller room, a sort of parlor, which consciousness occupies. But on
the threshold between the two rooms there stands a watchman; he passes on the
individual psychic impulses, censors them, and will not let them into the parlor
if they do not meet with his approval. You see at once that it makes little
difference whether the watchman brushes a single impulse away from the
threshold, or whether he drives it out again after it has already entered the
parlor. It is a question here only of the extent of his watchfulness, and the
timeliness of his judgment. Still working with this simile, we proceed to a
further elaboration of our nomenclature. The impulses in the ante-chamber of
the unconscious cannot be seen by the conscious, which is in the other room;
therefore for the time being they must remain unconscious. When they have
succeeded in pressing forward to the threshold, and have been sent back by the
watchman, then they are unsuitable for consciousness and we call
them suppressed. Those impulses, however, which the watchman has permitted
to cross the threshold have not necessarily become conscious; for this can
happen only if they have been successful in attracting to themselves the glance
of the conscious. We therefore justifiably call this second room the system of
the fore-conscious. In this way the process of becoming conscious retains its
purely descriptive sense. Suppression then, for any individual impulse, consists
in not being able to get past the watchman from the system of the unconscious
to that of the fore-conscious. The watchman himself is long since known to us;
we have met him as the resistance which opposed us when we attempted to
release the suppression through analytic treatment.
Now I know you will say that these conceptions are as crude as they are
fantastic, and not at all permissible in a scientific discussion. I know they are
crude—indeed, we even know that they are incorrect, and if we are not very
much mistaken we have a better substitute for them in readiness. Whether they
will continue then to appear so fantastic to you I do not know. For the time
being, they are useful conceptions, similar to the manikin Ampère who swims
in the stream of the electric current. In so far as they are helpful in the
understanding of our observation, they are by no means to be despised. I should
like to assure you that these crude assumptions go far in approximating the
actual situation—the two rooms, the watchman on the threshold between the
two, and consciousness at the end of the second room in the role of an
onlooker. I should also like to hear you admit that our designations—
unconscious, fore-conscious, and conscious are much less likely to arouse
prejudice, and are easier to justify than others that have been used or suggested
—such as sub-conscious, inter-conscious, between-conscious, etc.
This becomes all the more important to me if you should warn me that this
arrangement of the psychic apparatus, such as I have assumed in the
explanation of neurotic symptoms, must be generally applicable and must hold
for normal functioning as well. In that, of course, you are right. We cannot
follow this up at present, but our interest in the psychology of the development
of the symptom must be enormously increased if through the study of
pathological conditions we have the prospect of finding a key to the normal
psychic occurrences which have been so well concealed.
You will probably recognize what it is that supports our assumptions
concerning these two systems and their relation to consciousness. The
watchman between the unconscious and the fore-conscious is none other than
the censor under whose control we found the manifest dream to obtain its form.
The residue of the day's experiences, which we found were the stimuli which
set off the dream, are fore-conscious materials which at night, during sleep, had
come under the influence of unconscious and suppressed wishes. Borne along
by the energy of the wish, these stimuli were able to build the latent dream.
Under the control of the unconscious system this material was worked over,
went through an elaboration and displacement such as the normal psychic life
or, better said, the fore-conscious system, either does not know at all or
tolerates only exceptionally. In our eyes the characteristics of each of the two
systems were betrayed by this difference in their functioning. The dependent
relation between the fore-conscious and the conscious was to us only an
indication that it must belong to one of the two systems. The dream is by no
means a pathological phenomenon; it may appear in every healthy person under
the conditions of sleep. Any assumption as to the structure of the psychic
apparatus which covers the development of both the dream and the neurotic
symptom has also an undeniable claim to be taken into consideration in any
theory of normal psychic life.
So much, then, for suppression. It is, however, only a prerequisite for the
evolution of the symptom. We know that the symptom serves as a substitute for
a process kept back by suppression. Yet it is no simple matter to bridge this gap
between the suppression and the evolution of the substitute. We have first to
answer several questions on other aspects of the problem concerning the
suppression and its substantiation: What kind of psychological stimuli are at the
basis of the suppression; by what forces is it achieved; for what motives? On
these matters we have only one insight that we can go by. We learned in the
investigation of resistance that it grows out of the forces of the "I," in other
words from obvious and latent traits of character. It must be from the same
traits also that suppression derived support; at least they played a part in its
development. All further knowledge is still withheld from us.
A second observation, for which I have already prepared, will help us further
at this point. By means of analysis we can assign one very general purpose to
the neurotic symptom. This is of course nothing new to you. I have already
shown it to you in the two cases of neuroses. But, to be sure, what is the
significance of two cases! You have the right to demand that it be shown to you
innumerable times. But I am unable to do this. Here again your own experience
must step in, or your belief, which may in this matter rely upon the unanimous
account of all psychoanalysts.
You will remember that in these two cases, whose symptoms we subjected to
searching investigation, the analysis introduced us to the most intimate sexual
life of these patients. In the first case, moreover, we could identify with unusual
clearness the purpose or tendency of the symptoms under
investigation. Perhaps in the second case it was slightly covered by another
factor—one we will consider later. Now, the same thing that we saw in these
two examples we would see in all other cases that we subjected to analysis.
Each time, through analysis, we would be introduced to the sexual wishes and
experiences of the patient, and every time we would have to conclude that their
symptoms served the same purpose. This purpose shows itself to be the
satisfaction of sexual wishes; the symptoms serve as a sexual satisfaction for
the patient, they are a substitute for such satisfactions as they miss in reality.
 Recall the compulsive act of our first patient. The woman longs for her
intensely beloved husband, with whom she cannot share her life because of his
shortcoming and weaknesses. She feels she must remain true to him, she can
give his place to no one else. Her compulsive symptom affords her that for
which she pines, ennobles her husband, denies and corrects his weaknesses,—
above all, his impotence. This symptom is fundamentally a wish-fulfillment,
exactly as is a dream; moreover, it is what a dream not always is, an erotic
wish-fulfillment. In the case of our second patient you can see that one of the
component purposes of her ceremonial was the prevention of the intercourse of
her parents or the hindrance of the creation of a new child thereby. You have
perhaps also guessed that essentially she strove to put herself in the place of her
mother. Here again we find the removal of disturbances to sexual satisfaction
and the fulfillment of personal sexual wishes. We shall soon turn to the
complications of whose existence we have given you several indications.
I do not want to make reservations as to the universal applicability of these
declarations later on, and therefore I wish to call to your attention the fact that
everything that I say here about suppression, symptom-development and
symptom-interpretation has been learned from three types of neuroses—
anxiety-hysteria, conversion-hysteria, and compulsion-neuroses—and for the
time being is relevant to these forms only. These three conditions, which we are
in the habit of combining into one group under the name of "transference
neuroses," also limit the field open to psychoanalytic therapy. The other
neuroses have not been nearly so well studied by psychoanalysis,—in one
group, in fact, the impossibility of therapeutic influence has been the reason for
the neglect. But you must not forget that psychoanalysis is still a very young
science, that it demands much time and care in preparation for it, that not long
ago it was still in the cradle, so to speak. Yet at all points we are about to
penetrate into the understanding of those other conditions which are not
transference neuroses. I hope I shall still be able to speak to you of the
developments that our assumptions and results have undergone by being
correlated with this new material, and to show you that these further studies
have not led to contradictions but rather to the production of still greater
uniformity. Granted that everything, then, that has been said here, holds good
for the three transference neuroses, allow me to add a new bit of information to
the evaluation of its symptoms. A comparative investigation into the causes of
the disease discloses a result that may be confined into the formula: in some
way or other these patients fell ill through self-denial when reality withheld
from them the satisfaction of their sexual wishes. You recognize how
excellently well these two results are found to agree. The symptoms must be
understood, then, as a substitute satisfaction for that which is missed in life.
 To be sure, there are all kinds of objections possible to the declaration that
neurotic symptoms are substitutes for sexual satisfaction. I shall still go into
two of them today. If you yourself have analytically examined a fairly large
number of neurotics you will perhaps gravely inform me that in one class of
cases this is not at all applicable, the symptoms appear rather to have the
opposite purpose, to exclude sexual satisfaction, or discontinue it. I shall not
deny the correctness of your interpretation. The psychoanalytic content has a
habit of being more complicated than we should like to have it. Had it been so
simple, perhaps we should have had no need for psychoanalysis to bring it to
light. As a matter of fact, some of the traits of the ceremonial of our second
patient may be recognized as of this ascetic nature, inimical to sexual
satisfaction; for example, the fact that she removes the clocks, which have the
magic qualities of preventing nightly erections, or that she tries to prevent the
falling and breaking of vessels, which symbolizes a protection of her virginity.
In other cases of bed-ceremonials which I was able to analyze, this negative
character was far more evident; the ceremonial might consist throughout of
protective regulations against sexual recollections and temptations. On the
other hand, we have often discovered in psychoanalysis that opposites do not
mean contradictions. We might extend our assertion and say the symptoms
purpose either a sexual satisfaction or a guard against it; that in hysteria the
positive wish-fulfillment takes precedence, while in the compulsion neuroses
the negative, ascetic characteristics have the ascendancy. We have not yet been
able to speak of that aspect of the mechanism of the symptoms, their two-
sidedness, or polarity, which enables them to serve this double purpose, both
the sexual satisfaction and its opposite. The symptoms are, as we shall see,
compromise results, arising from the integration of two opposed tendencies;
they represent not only the suppressed force but also the suppressing factor,
which was originally potent in bringing about the negation. The result may then
favor either one side or the other, but seldom is one of the influences entirely
lacking. In cases of hysteria, the meeting of the two purposes in the same
symptom is most often achieved. In compulsion-neuroses, the two parts often
become distinct; the symptom then has a double meaning, it consists of two
actions, one following the other, one releasing the other. It will not be so easy
to put aside a further misgiving. If you should look over a large number of
symptom-interpretations, you would probably judge offhand that the
conception of a sexual substitute-satisfaction has been stretched to its utmost
limits in these cases. You will not hesitate to emphasize that these symptoms
offer nothing in the way of actual satisfaction, that often enough they are
limited to giving fresh life to sensations or phantasies from some sexual
complex. Further, you will declare that the apparent sexual satisfaction so often
shows a childish and unworthy character, perhaps approximates an act of
onanism, or is reminiscent of filthy naughtiness, habits that are already
forbidden and broken in childhood. Finally, you will express your surprise that
one should designate as a sexual satisfaction appetites which can only be
described as horrible or ghastly, even unnatural. As to these last points, we
shall come to no agreement until we have submitted man's sexual life to a
thorough investigation, and thus ascertained what one is justified in calling
sexual.

TWENTIETH LECTURE

GENERAL THEORY OF THE NEUROSES

The Sexual Life of Man

ONE might think we could take for granted what we are to understand by
the term "sexual." Of course, the sexual is the indecent, which we must not talk
about. I have been told that the pupils of a famous psychiatrist once took the
trouble to convince their teacher that the symptoms of hysteria very frequently
represent sexual matters. With this intention they took him to the bedside of a
woman suffering from hysteria, whose attacks were unmistakable imitations of
the act of delivery. He, however, threw aside their suggestion with the remark,
"a delivery is nothing sexual." Assuredly, a delivery need not under all
circumstances be indecent.
I see that you take it amiss that I jest about such serious matters. But this is
not altogether a jest. In all seriousness, it is not altogether easy to define the
concept "sexual." Perhaps the only accurate definition would be everything that
is connected with the difference between the two sexes; but this you may find
too general and too colorless. If you emphasize the sexual act as the central
factor, you might say that everything is sexual which seeks to obtain sensual
excitement from the body and especially from the sexual organs of the opposite
sex, and which aims toward the union of the genitals and the performance of
the sexual act. But then you are really very close to the comparison of sexual
and indecent, and the act of delivery is not sexual. But if you think of the
function of reproduction as the nucleus of sexuality you are in danger of
excluding a number of things that do not aim at reproduction but are certainly
sexual, such as onanism or even kissing. But we are prepared to realize that
attempts at definition always lead to difficulties; let us give up the attempt to
achieve the unusual in our particular case. We may suspect that in the
development of the concept "sexual" something occurred which resulted in a
false disguise. On the whole, we are quite well oriented as to what people call
sexual.
The inclusion of the following factors in our concept "sexual" amply suffices
for all practical purposes in ordinary life: the contrast between the sexes, the
attainment of sexual excitement, the function of reproduction, the characteristic
of an indecency that must be kept concealed. But this is no longer satisfactory
to science. For through careful examinations, rendered possible only by the
sacrifices and the unselfishness of the subjects, we have come in contact with
groups of human beings whose sexual life deviates strikingly from the average.
One group among them, the "perverse," have, as it were, crossed off the
difference between the sexes from their program. Only the same sex can arouse
their sexual desires; the other sex, even the sexual parts, no longer serve as
objects for their sexual desires, and in extreme cases, become a subject for
disgust. They have to that extent, of course, foregone any participation in
reproduction. We call such persons homosexual or inverted. Often, though not
always, they are men and women of high physical, intellectual and ethical
development, who are affected only with this one portentous abnormality.
Through their scientific leaders they proclaim themselves to be a special
species of mankind, "a third sex," which shares equal rights with the two other
sexes. Perhaps we shall have occasion to examine their claims critically. Of
course they are not, as they would like to claim, the "elect" of humanity, but
comprise just as many worthless second-rate individuals as those who possess a
different sexual organization.
At any rate, this type among the perverse seek to achieve the same ends with
the object of their desires as do normal people. But in the same group there
exists a long succession of abnormal individuals whose sexual activities are
more and more alien to what seems desirable to the sensible person. In their
manifold strangeness they seem comparable only to the grotesque freaks that P.
Breughel painted as the temptation of Saint Anthony, or the forgotten gods and
believers that G. Flaubert pictures in the long procession that passes before his
pious penitent. This ill-assorted array fairly clamors for orderly classification if
it is not to bewilder our senses. We first divide them, on the one hand, into
those whose sexual object has changed, as is the case with homosexualists, and,
on the other, those whose sexual aim has changed. Those of the first group have
dispensed with the mutual union of the genital organs, and have, as one of the
partners of the act, replaced the genitals by another organ or part of the body;
they have thus overcome both the short-comings of organic structure and the
usual disgust involved. There are others of this group who still retain the
genitals as their object, but not by virtue of their sexual function; they
participate for anatomic reasons or rather by reason of their proximity. By
means of these individuals we realize that the functions of excretion, which in
the education of the child are hushed away as indecent, still remain capable of
drawing complete sexual interest on themselves. There are still others who have
relinquished the genitals entirely as an objective, have raised another part of the
body to serve as the goal of their desire; the woman's breast, the foot, the tress
of hair. There are also the fetishists, to whom the body part means nothing, who
are gratified by a garment, a piece of white linen, a shoe. And finally there are
persons who seek the whole object but with certain peculiar or horrible
demands: even those who covet a defenseless corpse for instance, which they
themselves must criminally compel to satisfy their desire. But enough of these
horrors.
Foremost in the second grouping are those perverted ones who have placed
as the end of their sexual desire performances normally introductory or
preparatory to it. They satisfy their desire by their eyes and hands. They watch
or attempt to watch the other individual in his most intimate doings, or uncover
those portions of their own bodies which they should conceal in the vague
expectation of being rewarded by a similar procedure on the other person's part.
Here also belong the enigmatic sadists, whose affectionate strivings know no
other goal than to cause their object pain and agony, varying all the way from
humiliating suggestions to the harshest physical ill-treatment. As if to balance
the scale, we have on the other hand the masochists, whose sole satisfaction
consists in suffering every variety of humiliation and torture, symbolic and real,
at the hands of the beloved one. There are still others who combine and confuse
a number of these abnormal conditions. Moreover, in both these groups there
are those who seek sexual satisfaction in reality, and others who are content
merely to imagine such gratification, who need no actual object at all, but can
supplant it by their own fantastic creations.
There can be not the least doubt that the sexual activities of these individuals
are actually found in the absurdities, caprices and horrors that we have
examined. Not only do they themselves conceive them as adequate substitutes,
but we must recognize that they take the same place in their lives that normal
sex gratification occupies in ours, and for which they bring the same sacrifices,
often incommensurate with their ends. It is perfectly possible to trace along
broad lines as well as in detail in what way these abnormalities follow the
normal procedure and how they diverge from it. You will also find the
characteristic of indecency which belongs to the sexual act in these vagaries,
only that it is therein magnified to the disreputable.
Ladies and gentlemen, what attitude are we to assume to these unusual
varieties of sex gratification? Nothing at all is achieved by the mere expression
of indignation and personal disgust and by the assurance that we do not share
these lusts. That is not our concern. We have here a field of observation like
any other. Moreover, the evasion that these persons are merely rarities,
curiosities, is easily refuted. On the contrary, we are dealing with very frequent
and widespread phenomena. If, however, we are told that we must not permit
them to influence our views on sexual life, since they are all aberrations of the
sexual instinct, we must meet this with a serious answer. If we fail to
understand these abnormal manifestations of sexuality and are unable to relate
them to the normal sexual life, then we cannot understand normal sexuality. It
is, in short, our unavoidable task to account theoretically for all the
potentialities of the perversions we have gone over and to explain their relation
to the so-called normal sexuality.
A penetrating insight due to Ivan Bloch and two new experimental results
will help us in this task. Bloch takes exception to the point of view which sees
in a perversion a "sign of degeneration"; he proves that such deviations from
the aim of the sexual instinct, such loose relations to the object of sexuality,
have occurred at all times, among the most primitive and the most highly
civilized peoples, and have occasionally achieved toleration and general
recognition. The two experimental results were obtained in the course of
psychoanalytic investigations of neurotics; they will undoubtedly exert a
decided influence on our conceptions of sexual perversion.
We have stated that the neurotic symptoms are substitutions for sexual
satisfactions, and I have given you to understand that the proof of this assertion
by means of the analysis of symptoms encounters many difficulties. For this
statement is only justifiable if, under the term "sexual satisfactions," we include
the so-called perverse sexual ends, since with surprising frequency we find
symptoms which can be interpreted only in the light of their activity. The claim
of rareness made by the homosexualists or the inverted immediately collapses
when we learn that in the case of no single neurotic do we fail to obtain
evidence of homosexual tendencies, and that in a considerable number of
symptoms we find the expression of this latent inversion. Those who call
themselves homosexualists are the conscious and manifest inverts, but their
number is as nothing before the latent homosexualists. We are forced to regard
the desire for an object of one's own sex as a universal aberration of erotic life
and to cede increasing importance to it. Of course the differences between
manifest homosexuality and the normal attitude are not thus erased; their
practical importance persists, but their theoretic value is greatly decreased.
Paranoia, a disturbance which cannot be counted among the transference-
neuroses, must in fact be assumed as arising regularly from the attempt to ward
off powerful homosexual tendencies. Perhaps you will recall that one of our
patients under her compulsive symptoms acted the part of a man, namely that
of her own estranged husband; the production of such symptoms,
impersonating the actions of men, is very common to neurotic women. Though
this cannot be ascribed directly to homosexuality, it is certainly concerned with
its prerequisites.
You are probably acquainted with the fact that the neurosis of hysteria may
manifest its symptoms in all organic systems and may therefore disturb all
functions. Analysis shows that in these symptoms there are expressed all those
tendencies termed perverse, which seek to represent the genitals through other
organs. These organs behave as substitute genitals; through the study of
hysteric symptoms we have come to the conclusion that aside from their
functional activities, the organs of the body have a sexual significance, and that
the performance of their functions is disturbed if the sexual factor claims too
much attention. Countless sensations and innervations, which appear as
symptoms of hysteria, in organs apparently not concerned with sexuality, are
thus discovered as bound up with the fulfillment of perverse sexual desires
through the transference of sex instincts to other organs. These symptoms bring
home to us the extent to which the organs used in the consumption of food and
in excretion may become the bearers of sexual excitement. We see repeated
here the same picture which the perversions have openly and unmistakably lain
before us; in hysteria, however, we must make the detour of interpreting
symptoms, and in this case the perverse sexual tendencies must be ascribed not
to the conscious but to the unconscious life of the individual.
Among the many symptoms manifested in compulsion neurosis, the most
important are those produced by too powerful sadistic tendencies, i.e., sexual
tendencies with perverted aim. These symptoms, in accordance with the
structure of compulsion neurosis, serve primarily as a rejection of these desires,
or they express a struggle between satisfaction and rejection. In this struggle,
the satisfaction is never excessively curtailed; it achieves its results in the
patient's behavior in a roundabout way, by preference turning against his own
person in self-inflicted torture. Other forms of neurosis, characterized by
intensive worry, are the expression of an exaggerated sexualization of acts that
are ordinarily only preparatory to sexual satisfactions; such are the desires to
see, to touch, to investigate. Here is thus explained the great importance of the
fear of contact and also of the compulsion to wash. An unbelievably large
portion of compulsion acts may, in the form of disguised repetitions and
modifications, be traced back to onanism, admittedly the only uniform action
which accompanies the most varied flights of the sexual imagination.
It would cost me very little effort to interweave far more closely the relation
between perversion and neurosis, but I believe that what I have said is
sufficient for our purposes. We must avoid the error of overestimating the
frequency and intensity of perverse inclinations in the light of these
interpretations of symptoms. You have heard that a neurosis may develop from
the denial of normal sexual satisfactions. Through this actual denial the need is
forced into the abnormal paths of sex excitement. You will later obtain a better
insight into the way this happens. You certainly understand, that through such
"collateral" hindrance, the perverse tendencies must become more powerful
than they would have been if no actual obstacle had been put in the way of a
normal sexual satisfaction. As a matter of fact, a similar influence may be
recognized in manifest perversions. In many cases, they are provoked or
motivated by the fact that too great difficulties stand in the way of normal
sexual satisfactions, owing to temporary circumstances or to the permanent
institutions of society. In other cases, to be sure, the perverse tendencies are
entirely independent of such conditions; they are, as it were, the normal kind of
sexual life for the individual in question.
Perhaps you are momentarily under the impression that we have confused
rather than clarified the relation between normal and perverse sexuality. But
keep in mind this consideration. If it is true that a hindrance or withholding of
normal sexual satisfaction will bring out perverse tendencies in persons who
have not previously shown them, we must assume that these persons must have
harbored tendencies akin to perversities—or, if you will, perversities in latent
form. This brings us to the second experimental conclusion of which I spoke,
namely, that psychoanalytic investigation found it necessary to concern itself
with the sexual life of the child, since, in the analysis of symptoms,
reminiscences and ideas reverted to the early years of childhood. Whatever we
revealed in this manner was corroborated point by point through the direct
observation of children. The result was the recognition that all inclinations to
perversion have their origin in childhood, that children have tendencies toward
them all and practice them in a measure corresponding to their immaturity.
Perverse sexuality, in brief, is nothing more than magnified infantile sexuality
divided into its separate tendencies.
Now you will certainly see these perversions in another light and no longer
ignore their relation to the sexual life of man, at the cost, I do not doubt, of
surprises and incongruities painful to your emotions. At first you will
undoubtedly be disposed to deny everything—the fact that children have
something which may be termed sexual life, the truth of our observations and
the justification of our claim to see in the behavior of children any relation to
what is condemned in later years as perversity. Permit me first to explain to you
the cause of your reluctance and then to present to you the sum of our
observations. It is biologically improbable, even absurd, to assume that children
have no sexual life—sexual excitements, desires, and some sort of satisfaction
—but that they develop it suddenly between the ages of twelve and fourteen.
This would be just as improbable from the viewpoint of biology as to say that
they were not born with genitals but developed them only in the period of
puberty. The new factor which becomes active in them at the time is the
function of reproduction, which avails itself for its own purposes of all the
physical and psychic material already present. You commit the error of
confusing sexuality with reproduction and thereby block the road to the
understanding of sexuality, and of perversions and neuroses as well. This error
is a prejudice. Oddly enough its source is the fact that you yourselves were
children, and as children succumbed to the influence of education. One of the
most important educational tasks which society must assume is the control, the
restriction of the sexual instinct when it breaks forth as an impulse toward
reproduction; it must be subdued to an individual will that is identical with the
mandates of society. In its own interests, accordingly, society would postpone
full development until the child has reached a certain stage of intellectual
maturity, for education practically ceases with the complete emergence of the
sexual impulse. Otherwise the instinct would burst all bounds and the work of
culture, achieved with such difficulty, would be shattered. The task of
restraining this sexuality is never easy; it succeeds here too poorly and there too
well. The motivating force of human society is fundamentally economic; since
there is not sufficient nourishment to support its members without work on
their part, the number of these members must be limited and their energies
diverted from sexual activity to labor. Here, again, we have the eternal struggle
for life that has persisted from prehistoric times to the present.
Experience must have shown educators that the task of guiding the sexual
will of the new generation can be solved only by influencing the early sexual
life of the child, the period preparatory to puberty, not by awaiting the storm of
puberty. With this intention almost all infantile sex activities are forbidden
to the child or made distasteful to him; the ideal goal has been to render the life
of the child asexual. In the course of time it has really come to be considered
asexual, and this point of view has actually been proclaimed by science. In
order not to contradict our belief and intentions, we ignore the sexual activity of
the child—no slight thing, at that—or are content to interpret it differently. The
child is supposed to be pure and innocent, and whoever says otherwise may be
condemned as a shameless blasphemer of the tender and sacred feelings of
humanity.
The children are the only ones who do not join in carrying out these
conventions, who assert their animal rights, who prove again and again that the
road to purity is still before them. It is strange that those who deny the sexuality
of children, do not therefore slacken in their educational efforts but rather
punish severely the manifestations of the very thing they maintain does not
exist, and call it "childish naughtiness." Theoretically it is highly interesting to
observe that the period of life which offers most striking evidence against the
biased conception of asexual childhood, is the time up to five or six years of
age; after that everything is enveloped by a veil of amnesia, which is rent apart
only by thorough scientific investigation; it may previously have given way
partially in certain forms of dreams.
Now I shall present to you what is most easily recognizable in the sexual life
of the child. At first, for the sake of convenience let me explain to you the
conception of the libido. Libido, analogous to hunger, is the force through
which the instinct, here the sex instinct (as in the case of hunger it is the instinct
to eat) expresses itself. Other conceptions, such as sexual excitement and
satisfaction, require no elucidation. You will easily see that interpretation plays
the greatest part in disclosing the sexuality of the suckling; in fact you will
probably cite this as an objection. These interpretations proceed from a
foundation of analytic investigation that trace backwards from a given
symptom. The suckling reveals the first sexual impulses in connection with
other functions necessary for life. His chief interest, as you know, is directed
toward the taking in of food; when it has fallen asleep at its mother's breast,
fully satisfied, it bears the expression of blissful content that will come back
again in later life after the experience of the sexual orgasm. That of course
would be too slight evidence to form the basis of a conclusion. But we observe
that the suckling wishes to repeat the act of taking in food without actually
demanding more food; he is therefore no longer urged by hunger. We say he is
sucking, and the fact that after this he again falls asleep with a blissful
expression shows us that the act of sucking in itself has yielded him
satisfaction. As you know, he speedily arranges matters so that he cannot fall
asleep without sucking. Dr. Lindner, an old pediatrist in Budapest, was the first
one to ascertain the sexual nature of this procedure. Persons attending to the
child, who surely make no pretensions to a theoretic attitude, seem to judge
sucking in a similar manner. They do not doubt that it serves a pleasurable
satisfaction, term it naughty, and force the child to relinquish it against his will,
and if he will not do so of his own accord, through painful measures. And so
we learn that the suckling performs actions that have no object save the
obtaining of a sensual gratification. We believe that this gratification is first
experienced during the taking in of food, but that he speedily learns to separate
it from this condition. The gratification can only be attributed to the excitation
of the mouth and lips, hence we call these parts of the body erogenous
zones and the pleasure derived from sucking, sexual. Probably we shall have to
discuss the justification of this name.
If the suckling could express himself, he would probably recognize the act of
sucking at his mother's breast as the most important thing in life. He is not so
far wrong, for in this one act he satisfies two great needs of life. With no small
degree of surprise we learn through psychoanalysis how much of the physical
significance of this act is retained through life. The sucking at the mother's
breast becomes the term of departure for all of sexual life, the unattained ideal
of later sex gratification, to which the imagination often reverts in times of
need. The mother's breast is the first object for the sexual instinct; I can
scarcely bring home to you how significant this object is for centering on the
sexual object in later life, what profound influence it exerts upon the most
remote domains of psychic life through evolution and substitution. The
suckling, however, soon relinquishes it and fills its place by a part of his own
body. The child sucks his thumb or his own tongue. Thereby he renders himself
independent of the consent of the outer world in obtaining his sensual
satisfactions, and moreover increases the excitement by including a second
zone of his body. The erogenous zones are not equally satisfactory; it is
therefore an important experience when, as Dr. Lindner puts it, the child while
touching his own body discovers the especially excitable genitals, and so finds
the way from sucking to onanism.
Through the evaluation of sucking we become acquainted with two decisive
characteristics of infantile sexuality. It arises in connection with the satisfaction
of great organic needs and behaves auto-erotically, that is to say, it seeks and
finds it objects on its own body. What is most clearly discernible during the
taking in of food is partially repeated during excretion. We conclude that the
nursling experiences pleasure during the excretion of urine and the contents of
the intestine and that he soon strives to arrange these acts in a way to secure the
greatest possible amount of satisfaction by the corresponding excitement of the
erogenous membrane zones. Lou Andreas, with her delicate perceptions, has
shown how at this point the outer world first intervenes as a hindrance, hostile
to the child's desire for satisfaction—the first vague suggestion of outer and
inner conflicts. He may not let his excretions pass from him at a moment
agreeable to him, but only when other persons set the time. To induce him to
renounce these sources of satisfaction, everything relating to these functions is
declared indecent and must be concealed. Here, for the first time, he is to
exchange pleasure for social dignity. His own relation to his excretions is
originally quite different. He experiences no disgust toward his faeces, values
them as a part of his body from which he does not part lightly, for he uses them
as the first "present" he can give to persons he esteems particularly. Even after
education has succeeded in alienating him from these tendencies, he transfers
the evaluation of the faeces to the "present" and to "money." On the other hand,
he appears to regard his achievements in urination with especial pride.
I know that you have been wanting to interrupt me for a long time and to cry:
"Enough of these monstrosities! Excretion a source of sexual gratification that
even the suckling exploits! Faeces a valuable substance! The anus a sort of
genital! We do not believe it, but we understand why children's physicians and
pedagogues have decidedly rejected psychoanalysis and its results." No, you
have merely forgotten that it was my intention to present to you infantile
sexuality in connection with the facts of sexual perversion. Why should you not
know that in the case of many grown-ups, homosexuals as well as
heterosexuals, the locus of intercourse is transferred from the normal to a more
remote portion of the body. And that there are many individuals who confess to
a pleasurable sensation of no slight degree in the emptying of the bowels during
their entire lives! Children themselves will confirm their interest in the act of
defecation and the pleasure in watching the defecation of another, when they
are a few years older and capable of giving expression to their feelings. Of
course, if these children have previously been systematically intimidated, they
will understand all too well the wisdom of preserving silence on the subject. As
for the other things that you do not wish to believe, let me refer you to the
results of analysis and the direct observation of children, and you will realize
that it is difficult not to see these things or to see them in a different light. I do
not even object to making the relation between child-sexuality and sexual
perversion quite obvious to you. It is really only natural; if the child has sexual
life at all, it must necessarily be perverse, because aside from a few hazy
illusions, the child does not know how sexuality gives rise to reproduction. The
common characteristic of all perversions, on the other hand, is that they have
abandoned reproduction as their aim. We term sexual activity perverse when it
has renounced the aim of reproduction and follows the pursuit of pleasure as an
independent goal. And so you realize that the turning point in the development
of sexual life lies in its subjugation to the purpose of reproduction. Everything
this side of the turning point, everything that has given up this purpose and
serves the pursuit of pleasure alone, must carry the term "perverse" and as such
be regarded with contempt.
Permit me, therefore, to continue with my brief presentation of infantile
sexuality. What I have told you about two organic systems I could supplement
by a discussion of all the others. The sexual life of the child exhausts itself in
the exercise of a series of partial instincts which seek, independently of one
another, to gain satisfaction from his own body or from an external object.
Among these organs the genitals speedily predominate. There are persons who
continue the pursuit of satisfaction by means of their own genitals, without the
aid of another genital or object, uninterruptedly from the onanism of the
suckling to the onanism of necessity which arises in puberty, and even
indefinitely beyond that. The theme of onanism alone would occupy us for a
long period of time; it offers material for diverse observations.
In spite of my inclination to shorten the theme, I must tell you something
about the sexual curiosity of children. It is most characteristic for child
sexuality and significant for the study of neurotic symptoms. The sexual
curiosity of children begins very early, sometimes before the third year. It is not
connected with the differences of sexes, which means nothing to the child,
since the boy, at any rate, ascribes the same male genital to both sexes. When
the boy first discovers the primary sexual structure of the female, he tries at
first to deny the evidence of his senses, for he cannot conceive a human being
who lacks the part of his body that is of such importance to him. Later he is
terrified at the possibility revealed to him and he feels the influence of all the
former threats, occasioned by his intensive preoccupation with his little organ.
He becomes subject to the domination of the castration complex, the formation
of which plays an important part in the development of his character, provided
he remains healthy; of his neurosis, if he becomes diseased; of his resistance, if
he is treated analytically. We know that the little girl feels injured on account of
her lack of a large, visible penis, envies the boy his possession, and primarily
from this motive desires to be a man. This wish manifests itself subsequently in
neurosis, arising from some failure in her role as a woman. During childhood,
the clitoris of the girl is the equivalent of the penis; it is especially excitable, the
zone where auto-erotic satisfaction is achieved. In the transition to womanhood
it is most important that the sensations of the clitoris are completely transferred
at the right time to the entrance of the vagina. In cases of so-called sexual
anesthesia of women the clitoris has obstinately retained its excitability.
The sexual interest of children generally turns first to the mystery of birth—
the same problem that is the basis of the questions asked by the sphinx of
Thebes. This curiosity is for the most part aroused by the selfish fear of the
arrival of a new child. The answer which the nursery has ready for the child,
that the stork brings children, is doubted far more frequently than we imagine,
even by very young children. The feeling that he has been cheated out of the
truth by grown-ups, contributes greatly to the child's sense of solitude and to
his independent development. But the child is not capable of solving this
problem unaided. His undeveloped sexual constitution restricts his ability to
understand. At first he assumes that children are produced by a special
substance in one's food and does not know that only women can bear children.
Later he learns of this limitation and relinquishes the derivation of children
from food—a supposition retained in the fairy-tale. The growing child soon
notices that the father plays some part in reproduction, but what it is he cannot
guess. If, by chance, he is witness of a sexual act, he sees in it an attempt to
subjugate, a scuffle, the sadistic miscomprehension of coitus; he does not
however relate this act immediately to the evolution of the child. When he
discovers traces of blood on the bedsheets or on the clothing of his mother, he
considers them the proof of an injury inflicted by the father. During the latter
part of childhood, he imagines that the sexual organ of the man plays an
important part in the evolution of children, but can ascribe only the function of
urination to that part of his body.
 From the very outset children unite in believing that the birth of the child
takes place through the anus; that the child therefore appears as a ball of faeces.
After anal interests have been proven valueless, he abandons this theory and
assumes that the navel opens or that the region between the two breasts is the
birthplace of the child. In this way the curious child approaches the knowledge
of sexual facts, which, clouded by his ignorance, he often fails to see. In the
years prior to puberty he generally receives an incomplete, disparaging
explanation which often causes traumatic consequences.
You have probably heard that the conception "sexual" is unduly expanded by
psychoanalysis in order that it may maintain the hypothesis that all neuroses are
due to sexual causes and that the meaning of the symptoms is sexual. You are
now in a position to judge whether or not this expansion is unjustifiable. We
have expanded the conception sexual only to include the sexual life of children
and of perverse persons. That is to say, we have reëstablished its proper
boundaries. Outside of psychoanalysis sexuality means only a very limited
thing: normal sexual life in the service of reproduction.

TWENTY-FIRST LECTURE

GENERAL THEORY OF THE NEUROSES

Development of the Libido and Sexual Organizations

IAM under the impression that I did not succeed in convincing you of the
significance of perversions for our conception of sexuality. I should therefore
like to clarify and add as much as I can.
It was not only perversions that necessitated an alteration of our conception
of sexuality, which aroused such vehement contradiction. The study of infantile
sexuality did a great deal more along that line, and its close correspondence to
the perversions became decisive for us. But the origin of the expressions of
infantile sexuality, unmistakable as they are in later years of childhood, seem to
be lost in obscurity. Those who disregard the history of evolution and analytic
coherence, will dispute the potency of the sexual factor and will infer the
agency of generalized forces. Do not forget that as yet we have no generally
acknowledged criterion for identifying the sexual nature of an occurrence,
unless we assume that we can find it in a relation to the functions of
reproduction, and this we must reject as too narrow. The biological criteria,
such as the periodicities of twenty-three and twenty-eight days, suggested by
W. Fliess, are by no means established; the specific chemical nature which we
can possibly assume for sexual occurrences is still to be discovered. The sexual
perversions of adults, on the other hand, are tangible and unambiguous. As
their generally accepted nomenclature shows, they are undoubtedly sexual in
character; whether we designate them as signs of degeneration, or otherwise, no
one has yet had the courage to place them outside the phenomena of sex. They
alone justify the assertion that sexuality and reproduction are not coincident, for
it is clear that all of them disavow the goal of reproduction.
This brings me to an interesting parallel. While "conscious" and "psychic"
were generally considered to be identical, we had to make an essay to widen
our conception of the "psychic" to recognize as psychic something that was not
conscious. Analogously, when "sexual" and "related to reproduction" (or, in
shorter form, "genital") has been generally considered identical, psychoanalysis
must admit as "sexual" such things as are not "genital," things which have
nothing to do with reproduction. It is only a formal analogy, but it does not lack
a deeper basis.
But if the existence of sexual perversions is such a compelling argument,
why has it not long ago had its effect, and settled the question? I really am
unable to say. It appears to be because the sexual perversions are subject to a
peculiar ban that extends even into theory, and stands in the way of their
scientific appreciation. It seems as if no one could forget that they are not only
revolting, but even unnatural, dangerous; as if they had a seductive influence
and that at bottom one had to stifle a secret envy of those who enjoyed them.
As the count who passes judgment in the famous Tannhauser parody admits:

"And in the mount of Venus, his honor slipped his mind,

It's odd that never happens to people of our kind."

Truthfully speaking, the perverts are rather poor devils who atone most
bitterly for the satisfaction they attain with such difficulty.
What makes the perverse activity unmistakably sexual, despite all the
strangeness of its object, is that the act in perverse satisfaction most frequently
is accompanied by a complete orgasm, and by an ejaculation of the genital
product. Of course, this is only true in the case of adults; with children orgasms
and genital excretions are hardly possible; they are replaced by rudiments
which, again, are not recognized as truly sexual.
In order to complete the appreciation of sexual perversions, I have something
to add. Condemned as they are, sharply as they are contrasted with the normal
sexual activity, simple observation shows that rarely is normal sex-life entirely
free from one or another of the perverse traits. Even the kiss can be claimed to
be perverse, for it consists in the union of two erogenous mouth zones in place
of the respective genitals. But no one outlaws it as perverse, it is, on the
contrary, admitted in theatrical performances as a modified suggestion of the
sexual act. This very kissing may easily become a complete perversion if it
results in such intensity that it is immediately followed by an emission and
orgasm—a thing that is not at all unusual. Further, we can learn that handling
and gazing upon the object becomes an essential prerequisite to sexual
pleasure; that some, in the height of sexual excitation, pinch and bite, that the
greatest excitation is not always called forth in lovers by the genitals, but rather
by other parts of the body, and so forth. There is no sense in considering
persons with single traits of this kind abnormal, and counting them among the
perverts. Rather, we recognize more and more clearly that the essential nature
of perversion does not consist in overstepping the sexual aim, nor in a
substitution for the genitals, not even in the variety of objects, but simply in the
exclusiveness with which these deviations are carried out and by means of
which the sexual act that serves reproduction is pushed aside. When the
perverse activities serve to prepare or heighten the normal sexual act, they are
really no longer perversions. To be sure, the chasm between normal and
perverse sexuality is practically bridged by such facts. The natural result is that
normal sexuality takes its origin from something existing prior to it, since
certain components of this material are thrown out and others are combined in
order to make them subject to a new aim—that of reproduction.
Before we make use of our knowledge of perversions to concentrate anew
and with clearer perspective on the study of infantile sexuality, I must call your
attention to an important difference between the two. Perverse sexuality is as a
rule extraordinarily centralized, its whole action is directed toward one, usually
an isolated, goal. A partial instinct has the upper hand. It is either the only one
that can be demonstrated or it has subjected the others to its purposes. In this
respect there is no difference between normal and perverse sexuality other than
that the ruling partial instincts, and with them the sexual goals, are different. In
the one case as well as in the other there is, so to say, a well organized tyranny,
excepting that here one family and there another has appropriated all the power
to itself. Infantile sexuality, on the other hand, is on the whole devoid of such
centralization and organization, its individual component impulses are of equal
power, and each independently goes in search of the acquisition of pleasurable
excitement. The lack as well as the presence of centralization fit in well with
the fact that both the perverse and the normal sexuality originated from the
infantile. There are also cases of perverse sexuality that have much more
similarity with the infantile, where, independently of one another, numerous
partial instincts have forced their way, insisted on their aims, or rather
perpetuated them. In these cases it is more correct to speak of infantilism of
sexual life than of perversions.
Thus prepared we can consider a question which we certainly shall not be
spared. People will say to us: "Why are you so set on including within sexuality
those manifestations of childhood, out of which the sexual later develops, but
which, according to your own admission, are of uncertain origin? Why are you
not satisfied rather with the physiological description, and simply say that even
in the suckling one may notice activities, such as sucking objects or holding
back excrements, which show us that he strives towards an organic pleasure?
In that way you would have avoided the estranging conception of sexual life in
the tiniest child." I have nothing to say against organic pleasure; I know that the
most extreme excitement of the sexual union is only an organic pleasure
derived from the activity of the genitals. But can you tell me when this organic
pleasure, originally not differentiated, acquires the sexual character that it
undoubtedly does possess in the later phases of development? Do you know
more about the "organic pleasure" than about sexuality? You will answer, the
sexual character is acquired when the genitals begin to play their role; sexual
means genital. You will even reject the contrary evidence of the perversions by
confronting me with the statement that in most perversions it is a matter of
achieving the genital orgasm, although by other means than a union of the
genitals. You would really command a much better position if you did not
regard as characteristic of the sexual that untenable relation to reproduction
seen in the perversions, if you replaced it by activity of the genitals. Then we
no longer differ very widely; the genital organs merely replace other organs.
What do you make of the numerous practices which show you that the genitals
may be represented by other organs in the attainment of gratification, as is the
case in the normal kiss, or the perverse practices of "fast life," or the symptoms
of hysteria? In these neuroses it is quite usual for stimulations, sensations and
innervations, even the process of erection, which is localized in the genitals, to
be transferred to other distant parts of the body, so that you have nothing to
which you can hold as characteristics of the sexual. You will have to decide to
follow my example and expand the designation "sexual" to include the strivings
of early childhood toward organic pleasure.
Now, for my justification, I should like you to give me the time for two more
considerations. As you know, we call the doubtful and indefinable pleasure
activities of earliest childhood sexual because our analysis of the symptoms
leads us to them by way of material that is undeniably sexual. We admit that it
need not for that reason in itself be sexual. But take an analogous case. Suppose
there were no way to observe the development of two dicotyledonous plants
from their seeds—the apple tree and the bean. In both cases, however, imagine
it possible to follow their evolution from the fully developed plant backwards
to the first seedling with two leaf-divisions. The two little leaves are
indistinguishable, in both cases they look exactly alike. Shall I conclude from
this that they really are the same and that the specific differences between an
apple tree and bean plant do not appear until later in the history of the plant? Or
is it biologically more correct to believe that this difference is already present
in the seedling, although the two little leaves show no differences? We do the
same thing when we term as sexual the pleasure derived from the activities of
the suckling. Whether each and every organic enjoyment may be called sexual,
or if besides the sexual there is another that does not deserve this name, is a
matter I cannot discuss here. I know too little about organic pleasure and its
conditions, and will not be at all surprised if the retrogressive character of the
analysis leads us back finally to a generalized factor.
One thing more. You have on the whole gained very little for what you are so
anxious to maintain, the sexual purity of the child, even when you can convince
me that the activities of the suckling had better not be called sexual. For from
the third year on, there is no longer any doubt concerning the presence of a
sexual life in the child. At this time the genitals already begin to become active;
there is perhaps regularly a period of infantile masturbation, in other words, a
gratification by means of the genitals. The psychic and social expressions of the
sexual life are no longer absent; choice of an object, affectionate preference for
certain persons, indeed, a leaning toward one of the two sexes, jealousy—all
these have been established independently by unprejudiced observation, prior
to the advent of psychoanalysis, and confirmed by every careful observer. You
will say that you had no doubt as to the early awakening of affection, you will
take issue only with its sexual nature. Children between the ages of three and
eight have already learned to hide these things, but if you look sharply you can
always gather sufficient evidence of the "sexual" purpose of this affection.
What escapes you will be amply supplied by investigation. The sexual goals of
this period of life are most intimately connected with the contemporaneous
sexual theories, of which I have given you some examples. The perverse nature
of some of these goals is the result of the constitutional immaturity of the child,
who has not yet discovered the goal of the act of copulation.
From about the sixth or the eighth year on a pause in, and reversion of,
sexual development is noticeable, which in the cases that reach the highest
cultural standard deserves the name of a latent period. The latent period may
also fail to appear and there need not be an interruption of sexual activity and
sexual interests at any period. Most of the experiences and impulses prior to the
latent period then fall victim to the infantile amnesia, the forgetting we have
already discussed, which cloaks our earliest childhood and makes us strangers
to it. In every psychoanalysis we are confronted with the task of leading this
forgotten period of life back into memory; one cannot resist the supposition that
the beginning of sexual life it contains furnishes the motive for this forgetting,
namely, that this forgetting is a result of suppression.
The sexual life of the child shows from the third year that it has much in
common with that of the adult; it is distinguished from the latter, as we already
know, by the lack of stable organization under the primacy of the genitals, by
the unavoidable traits of perversion, and, naturally, by the far lesser intensity of
the whole impulse. Theoretically the most interesting phases of the sexual
development or, as we would rather say, the libido-development, so far as
theory is concerned, lie back of this period. This development is so rapidly
gone through that perhaps it would never have been possible for direct
observation to grasp its fleeting pictures. Psychoanalytic investigation of the
neuroses has for the first time made it possible to discover more remote phases
of the libido-development. These are, to be sure, nothing but constructions, but
if you wish to carry on psychoanalysis in a practical way you will find that they
are necessary and valuable constructions. You will soon understand why
pathology may disclose conditions which we would have overlooked in the
normal object.
We can now declare what form the sexual life of the child takes before the
primacy of the genitals is established. This primacy is prepared in the first
infantile epoch prior to the latent period, and is continuously organized from
puberty on. There is in this early period a sort of loose organization, which we
shall call pre-genital. In the foreground of this phase, however, the partial
instincts of the genitals are not prominent, rather the sadistic and anal. The
contrast between masculine and feminine plays no part as yet, its place is taken
by the contrast between active and passive, which we may designate as the
forerunner of sexual polarity, with which it is later fused. That which appears
masculine to us in the activity of this phase, observed from the standpoint of
the later genital stage, is the expression of an instinct to mastery, which may
border on cruelty. Impulses with passive goals attach themselves to the
erogenous zone of the rectal opening. Most important at this time, curiosity and
the instinct to watch are powerful. The genital really takes part in the sexual life
only in its role as excretory organ for the bladder. Objects are not lacking to the
partial impulses of this period, but they do not necessarily combine into a single
object. The sadistico-anal organization is the step antecedent to the phase of
genital primacy. A more penetrating study furnishes proof how much of this is
retained for the later and final form, and in what ways its partial instincts are
forced into line under the new genital organization. Back of the sadistico-anal
phase of libido-development, we get a view of an earlier, even more primitive
phase of organization, in which the erogenous mouth-zone plays the chief role.
You may surmise that the sexual activity of sucking belongs to it, and may
wonder at the intuition of the ancient Egyptians, whose art characterized the
child, as well as the god Horus, with the finger in his month. Abraham only
recently published material concerning the traces which this primitive oral
phase has left upon the sexual life of later years.
I can surmise that these details about sexual organization have burdened your
mind more than they have informed you. Perhaps I have again gone into detail
too much. But be patient; what you have heard will become more valuable
through the uses to which it is later put. Keep well in mind the impression that
sexual life, as we call it, the function, of the libido, does not make its
appearance as a completed whole, nor does it develop in its own image, but
goes through a series of successive phases which are not similar to each other.
In fact, it is a developmental sequence, like that from the grub to the butterfly.
The turning point of the development is the subordination of all sexual partial-
instincts to the primacy of the genitals, and thereby the subjection of sexuality
to the function of reproduction. Originally it is a diffused sexual life, one which
consists of independent activities of single partial instincts which strive towards
organic gratification. This anarchy is modified by approaches to pre-genital
organization, first of all the sadistico-anal phase, prior to this the oral phase,
which is perhaps the most primitive. Added to this there are the various
processes, as yet not well known, which carry over one organization level to
the later and more advanced phase. The significance, for the understanding of
the neuroses, of the long evolutionary path of the libido which carries it over so
many grades we shall discuss on another occasion.
Today we shall look at another angle of the development, namely the relation
of the partial instinct to the object. We shall make a hurried survey of this
development in order to spend more time upon a relatively later product. Some
of the components of the sex instincts have had an object from the very
beginning and hold fast to it; such are the instinct to mastery (sadism),
curiosity, and the impulse to watch. Other impulses which are more clearly
attached to specific erogenous zones of the body have this object only in the
beginning, as long as they adhere to the functions which are not sexual; they
release this object when they free themselves from these non-sexual functions.
The first object of the oral component of the sexual impulse is the mother's
breast, which satisfies the hunger of the infant. By the act of sucking, the erotic
component which is also satisfied by the sucking becoming independent, it
gives up the foreign object and replaces it by some part of its own body. The
oral impulse becomes auto-erotic, just as the anal and other erogenous impulses
are from the very beginning. Further development, to express it most briefly,
has two goals—first, to give up auto-eroticism, and, again, to substitute for the
object of one's own body a foreign object; second, to unify the different objects
into a single impulse, replace them by a single object. To be sure, that can
happen only if this single object is itself complete, a body similar to one's own.
Nor can it be consummated without leaving behind as useless a large number of
the auto-erotic instinctive impulses.
The processes of finding the object are rather involved, and have as yet had
no comprehensive exposition. For our purpose, let us emphasize the fact that
when the process has come to a temporary cessation in the childhood years,
before the latent period, the object it has found is seen to be practically
identical with the first object derived from its relation to the object of the oral
pleasure impulse. It is, if not the mother's breast, the mother herself. We call the
mother the first object of love. For we speak of love when we emphasize the
psychic side of sex-impulses, and disregard or for a moment wish to forget the
fundamental physical or "sensual" demands of the instincts. At the time when
the mother becomes the object of love, the psychic work of suppression which
withdraws the knowledge of a part of his sexual goal from his consciousness
has already begun in the child. The selection of the mother as the object of love
involves everything we understand by the Oedipus complex which has come to
have such great significance in the psychoanalytic explanation of neuroses, and
which has had no small part in arousing opposition to psychoanalysis.
Here is a little experience which took place during the present war: A brave
young disciple of psychoanalysis is a doctor at the German front somewhere in
Poland, and attracts the attention of his colleagues by the fact that he
occasionally exercises an unexpected influence in the case of a patient. Upon
being questioned he admits that he works by means of psychoanalysis and is
finally induced to impart his knowledge to his colleagues. Every evening the
physicians of the corps, colleagues and superiors, gather in order to listen to the
inmost secrets of analysis. For a while this goes on nicely, but after he has told
his audience of the Oedipus-complex, a superior rises and says he does not
believe it, that it is shameful for the lecturer to tell such things to them, brave
men who are fighting for their fatherland, and who are the fathers of families,
and he forbade the continuation of the lectures. This was the end.
Now you will be impatient to discover what this frightful Oedipus-complex
consists of. The name tells you. You all know the Greek myth of King Oedipus,
who is destined by the fates to kill his father, and take his mother to wife, who
does everything to escape the oracle and then does penance by blinding himself
when he discovers that he has, unknowingly, committed these two sins. I trust
many of you have yourselves experienced the profound effect of the tragedy in
which Sophocles handles this material. The work of the Attic poet presents the
manner in which the deed of Oedipus, long since accomplished, is finally
brought to light by an artistically prolonged investigation, continuously fed
with new evidence; thus far it has a certain similarity to the process of
psychoanalysis. In the course of the dialogue it happens that the infatuated
mother-wife, Jocasta, opposes the continuation of the investigation. She recalls
that many men have dreamed that they have cohabited with their mothers, but
one should lay little stress on dreams. We do not lay little stress on dreams,
least of all typical dreams such as occur to many men, and we do not doubt that
this dream mentioned by Jocasta is intimately connected with the strange and
frightful content of the myth.
It is surprising that Sophocles' tragedy does not call forth much greater
indignation and opposition on the part of the audience, a reaction similar to,
and far more justified, than the reaction to our simple military physician. For it
is a fundamentally immoral play, it dispenses with the moral responsibility of
men, it portrays godlike powers as instigators of guilt, and shows the
helplessness of the moral impulses of men which contend against sin. One
might easily suppose that the burden of the myth purposed accusation against
the gods and Fate, and in the hands of the critical Euripides, always at odds
with the gods, it would probably have become such an accusation. But there is
no trace of this in the work of the believer Sophocles. A pious sophistry which
asserts that the highest morality is to bow to the will of the gods, even if they
command a crime, helps him over the difficulty. I do not think that this moral
constitutes the power of the drama, but so far as the effect goes, that is
unimportant; the listener does not react to it, but to the secret meaning and
content of the myth. He reacts as though through self-analysis he had
recognized in himself the Oedipus-complex, and had unmasked the will of the
gods, as well as the oracle, as sublime disguises of his own unconsciousness. It
is as though he remembered the wish to remove his father, and in his place to
take his mother to wife, and must be horrified at his own desires. He also
understands the voice of the poet as if it were telling him: "You revolt in vain
against your responsibility, and proclaim in vain the efforts you have made to
resist these criminal purposes. In spite of these efforts, you are guilty, for you
have not been able to destroy the criminal purposes, they will persist
unconsciously in you." And in that there is psychological truth. Even if man has
relegated his evil impulses to the unconscious, and would tell himself that he is
no longer answerable for them, he will still be compelled to experience this
responsibility as a feeling of guilt which he cannot trace to its source.
It is not to be doubted for a moment that one may recognize in the Oedipus-
complex one of the most important sources for the consciousness of guilt with
which neurotics are so often harassed. But furthermore, in a study of the origins
of religion and morality of mankind which I published in 1913, under the title
of Totem and Taboo, the idea was brought home to me that perhaps mankind as
a whole has, at the beginning of its history, come by its consciousness of guilt,
the final source of religion and morality, through the Oedipus-complex. I
should like to say more on this subject, but perhaps I had better not. It is
difficult to turn away from this subject now that I have begun speaking of it,
but we must return to individual psychology.
What does direct observation of the child at the time of the selection of its
object, before the latent period, show us concerning the Oedipus-complex? One
may easily see that the little man would like to have the mother all to himself,
that he finds the presence of his father disturbing, he becomes irritated when
the latter permits himself to show tenderness towards the mother, and expresses
his satisfaction when the father is away or on a journey. Frequently he
expresses his feelings directly in words, promises the mother he will marry her.
One may think this is very little in comparison with the deeds of Oedipus, but it
is actually enough, for it is essentially the same thing. The observation is
frequently clouded by the circumstance that the same child at the same time, on
other occasions, gives evidence of great tenderness towards its father; it is only
that such contradictory, or rather, ambivalent emotional attitudes as would lead
to a conflict in the case of an adult readily take their place side by side in a
child, just as later on they permanently exist in the unconscious. You might
wish to interpose that the behavior of the child springs from egoistic motives
and does not justify the setting up of an erotic complex. The mother provides
for all the necessities of the child, and it is therefore to the child's advantage
that she troubles herself for no one else. This, too, is correct, but it will soon be
clear that in this, as in similar situations, the egoistic interest offers only the
opportunity upon which the erotic impulse seizes. If the little one shows the
most undisguised sexual curiosity about his mother, if he wants to sleep with
her at night, insists upon being present while she is dressing, or attempts to
caress her, as the mother can so often ascertain and laughingly relates, it is
undoubtedly due to the erotic nature of the attachment to his mother. We must
not forget that the mother shows the same care for her little daughter without
achieving the same effect, and that the father often vies with her in caring for
the boy without being able to win the same importance in his eyes as the
mother. In short, it is clear that the factor of sex-preference cannot be
eliminated from the situation by any kind of criticism. From the standpoint of
egoistic interest it would merely be stupid of the little fellow not to tolerate two
persons in his services rather than only one.
I have, as you will have noticed, described only the relation of the boy to his
father and mother. As far as the little girl is concerned, the process is the same
with the necessary modifications. The affectionate devotion to the father, the
desire to set aside the mother as superfluous and to take her place, a
coquetry which already works with all the arts of later womanhood, give such a
charming picture, especially in the baby girl, that we are apt to forget its
seriousness, and the grave consequences which may result from this infantile
situation. Let us not fail to add that frequently the parents themselves exert a
decisive influence over the child in the wakening of the Oedipus attitude, in
that they themselves follow a sex preference when there are a number of
children. The father in the most unmistakable manner shows preference for the
daughter, while the mother is most affectionate toward the son. But even this
factor cannot seriously undermine the spontaneous character of the childish
Oedipus-complex. The Oedipus-complex expands and becomes a family-
complex when other children appear. It becomes the motive force, revived by
the sense of personal injury, which causes the child to receive its brothers and
sisters with aversion and to wish to remove them without more ado. It is much
more frequent for the children to express these feelings of hatred than those
arising from the parent-complex. If such a wish is fulfilled, and death takes
away the undesired increase in the family, after a short while we may discover
through analysis what an important experience this death was for the child,
even though he had not remembered it. The child forced into second place by
the birth of a little brother or sister, and for the first time practically isolated
from his mother, is loathe to forgive her for this; feelings which we would call
extreme bitterness in an adult are aroused in him and often become the basis of
a lasting estrangement. We have already mentioned that sexual curiosity with
all its consequences usually grows out of these experiences of the child. With
the growing up of these brothers and sisters the relation to them undergoes the
most significant changes. The boy may take his sister as the object for his love,
to replace his faithless mother; situations of dangerous rivalry, which are of
vast importance for later life, arise even in the nursery among numerous
brothers who court the affection of a younger sister. A little girl finds in her
older brother a substitute for her father, who no longer acts towards her with
the same affection as in former years, or she takes a younger sister as a
substitute for the child that she vainly wished of her father.
Such things, and many more of a similar character, are shown by the direct
observation of children and the consideration of their vivid childish
recollections, which are not influenced by the analysis. You will conclude,
among other things, that the position of a child in the sequence of his brothers
and sisters is of utmost importance for the entire course of his later life, a factor
which should be considered in every biography. In the face of these
explanations that are found with so little effort, you will hardly recall without
smiling the scientific explanations for the prohibition of incest. What
inventions! By living together from early childhood the sexual attraction must
have been diverted from these members of the family who are of opposite sex,
or a biological tendency against in-breeding finds its psychic equivalent in an
innate dread of incest! In this no account is taken of the fact that there would be
no need of so unrelenting a prohibition by law and morality if there were any
natural reliable guards against the temptation of incest. Just the opposite is true.
The first choice of an object among human beings is regularly an incestuous
one, in the man directed toward the mother and sister, and the most stringent
laws are necessary to prevent this persisting infantile tendency from becoming
active. Among the primitive races the prohibitions against incest are much
more stringent than ours, and recently Th. Reik showed in a brilliant paper that
the puberty-rites of the savages, which represent a rebirth, have the significance
of loosing the incestuous bonds of the boy to his mother, and of establishing the
reconciliation with the father.
Mythology teaches that incest, apparently so abhorred by men, is permitted
to the gods without further thought, and you may learn from ancient history that
incestuous marriage with his sister was holy prescript for the person of the ruler
(among the ancient Pharaohs and the Incas of Peru). We have here a privilege
denied the common herd.
Incest with his mother is one of the sins of Oedipus, patricide the other. It
might also be mentioned that these are the two great sins which the first social-
religious institution of mankind, totemism, abhors. Let us turn from the direct
observation of the child to analytic investigation of the adult neurotic. What
does analysis yield to the further knowledge of the Oedipus-complex? This is
easily told. It shows the patient up in the light of the myth; it shows that each of
these neurotics was himself an Oedipus or, what amounts to the same
thing, became a Hamlet in the reaction to the complex. To be sure, the analytic
representation of the Oedipus-complex enlarges upon and is a coarser edition of
the infantile sketch. The hatred of the father, the death-wish with regard to him,
are no longer timidly suggested, the affection for the mother recognizes the
goal of possessing her for a wife. Dare we really accredit these horrible and
extreme feelings to those tender childhood years, or does analysis deceive us by
bringing in some new element? It is not difficult to discover this. Whenever an
account of past events is given, be it written even by a historian, we must take
into account the fact that inadvertently something has been interpolated from
the present and from intervening times into the past; so that the entire picture is
falsified. In the case of the neurotic it is questionable whether this interpolation
is entirely unintentional or not; we shall later come to learn its motives and
must justify the fact of "imagining back" into the remote past. We also easily
discover that hatred of the father is fortified by numerous motives which
originate in later times and circumstances, since the sexual wishes for the
mother are cast in forms which are necessarily foreign to the child. But it would
be a vain endeavor to explain the whole of the Oedipus-complex by "imagining
back," and as related to later times. The infantile nucleus and more or less of
what has been added to it continues to exist and may be verified by the direct
observation of the child.
 The clinical fact which we meet with in penetrating the form of the Oedipus-
complex as established by analysis, is of the greatest practical importance. We
learn that at the period of puberty, when the sexual instinct first asserts its
demands in full strength, the old incestuous and familiar objects are again taken
up and seized anew by the libido. The infant's choice of an object was feeble,
but it nevertheless set the direction for the choice of an object in puberty. At
that time very intense emotional experiences are brought into play and directed
towards the Oedipus-complex, or utilized in the reaction to it. However, since
their presuppositions have become unsupportable, they must in large part
remain outside of consciousness. From this time on the human individual must
devote himself to the great task of freeing himself from his parents, and only
after he has freed himself can he cease to be a child, and become a member of
the social community. The task confronting the son consists of freeing himself
from his libidinous wishes towards his mother and utilizing them in the quest
for a really foreign object for his love. He must also effect a reconciliation with
his father, if he has stayed hostile to him, or if in the reaction to his infantile
opposition he has become subject to his domination, he must now free himself
from this pressure. These tasks are set for every man; it is noteworthy how
seldom their solution is ideally achieved, i.e., how seldom the solution is
psychologically as well as socially correct. Neurotics, however, find no
solution whatever; the son remains during his whole life subject to the authority
of his father, and is not able to transfer his libido to a foreign sexual object.
Barring the difference in the specific relation, the same fate may befall the
daughter. In this sense the Oedipus-complex is correctly designated as the
nucleus of the neurosis.
You can imagine how rapidly I am reviewing a great number of conditions
which are associated with the Oedipus-complex, of practical as well as of
theoretical importance. I cannot enter upon their variations or possible
inversions. Of its less immediate relations I only wish to indicate the influence
which the Oedipus-complex has been found to exert on literary production. In a
valuable book, Otto Rank has shown that the dramatists of all times have taken
their materials principally from the Oedipus-and incest-complexes, with their
variations and disguises. Moreover, we will not forget to mention that the two
guilty wishes of Oedipus were recognized long before the time of
psychoanalysis as the true representatives of the unrestrained life of impulses.
Among the writings of the encyclopedist Diderot we find a famous
dialogue, The Nephew of Ramau, which no less a person than Goethe has
translated into German. In this you may read the remarkable sentence: "If the
little savage were left to himself he would preserve all his imbecility, he would
unite the passions of a man of thirty to the unreasonableness of the child in the
cradle; he would twist his father's neck and bed with his mother."
 There is also one other thing of which I must needs speak. The mother-wife
of Oedipus shall not have reminded us of the dream in vain. Do you still
remember the result of our dream analysis, that the wishes out of which the
dream is constructed so frequently are of a perverse, incestuous nature, or
disclose an enmity toward near and beloved relatives the existence of which
had never been suspected? At the time we did not trace the sources of these evil
impulses. Now you may see them for yourselves. They represent the
disposition made in early infancy of the libidinous energy, with the objects,
long since given up in conscious life, to which it had once clung, which are
now shown at night to be still present and in a certain sense capable of activity.
But since all people have such perverse, incestuous and murderous dreams, and
not the neurotics alone, we may conclude that even those who are normal have
passed through the same evolutionary development, through the perversions
and the direction of the libidio toward the objects of the Oedipus-complex.
This, then, is the way of normal development, upon which the neurotics merely
enlarge. They show in cruder form what dream analysis exposes in the healthy
dreamer as well. Accordingly here is one of the motives which led us to deal
with the study of the dream before we considered the neurotic symptom.

TWENTY-SECOND LECTURE

GENERAL THEORY OF THE NEUROSES

Theories of Development and Regression—Etiology

WE have learned that the libidio goes through an extensive development

before it can enter the service of reproduction in a way which may be regarded
as normal. Now I wish to present to you what importance this fact possesses for
the causation of neuroses.
I believe we are in harmony with the teachings of general pathology in
assuming that this development involves two dangers, inhibition and
regression. In other words, with the universal tendency of biological processes
toward variation, it must necessarily happen that not all preparatory phases of a
given function are equally well passed through or accomplished with
comparable thoroughness. Certain components of a function may be
permanently held back in an early stage of development and the complete
development is therefore retarded to a certain extent.
Let us seek analogies for these processes from other fields. If a whole people
leaves its dwellings to seek a new home, as frequently happened in the early
periods of the history of mankind, their entire number will certainly not reach
the new destination. Setting aside other losses, small groups or associations of
these wandering peoples would stop on the way, and, while the majority passes
on, they would settle down at these way-stations. Or, to seek a more
appropriate comparison: You know that in the most highly evolved mammals,
the male seminal glands, which originally are located in the far depths of the
abdominal cavity, begin to wander during a certain period of intra-uterine life
until they reach a position almost immediately under the skin of the pelvic
extremity. In the case of a number of male individuals, one of the paired glands
may as a result of this wandering remain in the pelvic cavity, or may be
permanently located in the canal through which both glands must pass in their
journey, or finally the canal itself may stay open permanently instead of
growing together with the seminal glands after the change of position has taken
place normally. When, as a young student, I was doing my first piece of
scientific research under the direction of von Brücke, I was working on the
dorsal nerve-roots in the spinal cord of a small fish very archaic in form. I
discovered that the nerve ganglia of these roots grow out from large cells which
lie in the grey matter of the dorsal column, a condition no longer true of other
vertebrates. But I soon discovered that such nerve cells are found outside the
grey matter all the way to the so-called spinal ganglion of the dorsal root. From
this I concluded that the cells of this group of ganglia had traveled from the
spinal cord to the roots of the nerves. This same result is attested by
embryology. In this little fish, however, the entire path of the journey was
traceable by the cells that had remained behind. Closer observation will easily
reveal to you the weak points of these comparisons. Therefore let me simply
say that with reference to every single sexual impulse, I consider it possible for
several of its components to be held back in the earlier stages of development
while other components have worked themselves out to completion. You will
realize that we think of every such impulse as a current continuously driving on
from the very beginning of life, and that our resolving it into individual
movements which follow separately one upon the other is to a certain extent
artificial. Your impression that these concepts require further clarification is
correct, but an attempt would lead to too great digression. Before we pass on,
however, let us agree to call this arrest of a partial impulse in an early stage of
development, a fixation of the instinct.
Regression is the second danger of this development by stages. Even those
components which have achieved a degree of progress may readily turn
backward to these earlier stages. Having attained to this later and more highly
developed form, the impulse is forced to a regression when it encounters great
external difficulties in the exercise of its function, and accordingly cannot reach
the goal which will satisfy its strivings. We can obviously assume that fixation
and regression are not independent of each other. The stronger the fixations in
the process of development prove to be, the more readily will the function
evade external difficulties by a regression back to those fixations, and the
less capable will the fully developed function be to withstand the hindrances
that stand in the way of its exercise. Remember that if a people in its wandering
has left large groups at certain way-stations, it is natural for those who have
gone on to return to these stations if they are beaten or encounter a mighty foe.
The more they have left on the way, however, the greater is their chance of
defeat.
For your comprehension of the neuroses it is necessary to keep in mind this
connection between fixation and regression. This will give you a secure hold
upon the question of the cause of neuroses—of the etiology of neuroses—
which we shall soon consider.
For the present we have still to discuss various aspects of regression. With
the knowledge you have gained concerning the development of the function of
libido, you must expect two kinds of regression: incestuous return to the first
libidinous objects and return of the entire sexual organization to an earlier stage
of development. Both occur in the transference neuroses and play an important
part in its mechanism. Especially is the return to the first incestuous objects of
libido a feature that the neurotic exhibits with positively tiresome regularity.
We could say far more about regression of libido if we took into consideration
another group of neuroses: neurotic narcism. But we cannot do this now. These
conditions give us a clue to other stages of development of the function of
libido, which have not been mentioned previously, and correspondingly show
new kinds of regression. But I think the most important task before me at this
point is to warn you not to confuse regression and suppression, and aid you to
see clearly the connection between the two processes. Suppression, as you
know, is the process by which an act capable of becoming conscious, in other
words, an act that belongs to the fore-conscious system, is rendered
unconscious and accordingly is thrust back into the unconscious system.
Similarly we speak of suppression when the unconscious psychic act never has
been admitted into the adjoining fore-conscious system but is arrested by the
censor at the threshold. Kindly observe that the conception of suppression has
nothing to do with sexuality. It describes a purely psychological process, which
could better be characterized by terming it localized. By that we mean that it is
concerned with the spatial relationships within the psyche, or if we drop this
crude metaphor, with building up the psychological apparatus out of separate,
psychic systems.
Through these comparisons we observe that up to this point we have not used
the word regression in its general, but in a very special sense. If you accord it
the general meaning of return from a higher to a lower stage of development
you must include suppression as a form of regression, for suppression may also
be described as the reversion to an earlier and lower stage in the development
of a psychic act. Only in regard to suppression, this tendency to revert is not
necessarily involved, for when a psychic act is held back in the early
unconscious stage we also term it suppression in a dynamic sense. Suppression
is a localized and dynamic conception, regression purely descriptive. What up
this point we have called regression and considered in its relation to fixation,
was only the return of libido to former stages of its development. The nature of
this latter conception is entirely distinct and independent of suppression. We
cannot call the libido regressions purely psychical processes and do not know
what localization in the psychological apparatus we should assign to them.
Even though the libido exerts a most powerful influence on psychic life, its
organic significance is still the most conspicuous.
Discussions of this sort, gentlemen, are bound to be somewhat dry. To render
them more vivid and impressive, let us return to clinical illustrations. You
know that hysteria and compulsion-neurosis are the two chief factors in the
group of transference neuroses. In hysteria, libidinous return to primary,
incestuous sexual objects is quite regular, but regression to a former stage of
sexual organization very rare. In the mechanism of hysteria suppression plays
the chief part. If you will permit me to supplement our previous positive
knowledge of this neurosis by a constructive suggestion, I could describe the
state of affairs in this manner: the union of the partial instincts under the
domination of the genitals is accomplished, but its results encounter the
opposition of the fore-conscious system which, of course, is bound up with
consciousness. Genital organization, therefore, may stand for the unconscious
but not for the fore-conscious. Through this rejection on the part of the fore-
conscious, a situation arises which in certain aspects is similar to the condition
existing before the genitals had attained their primacy. Of the two libido
regressions, the regression to a former stage of sexual organization is by far the
more conspicuous. Since it is lacking in hysteria and our entire conception of
the neuroses is still too much dominated by the study of hysteria which
preceded it in point of time, the meaning of libido regression became clearer to
us much later than that of repression. Let us be prepared to widen and change
our attitude still more when we consider other narcistic neuroses besides
compulsion-neurosis and hysteria in our discussion.
In contrast to this, regression of libido in compulsion-neurosis turns back
most conspicuously to the earlier sadistico-anal organization, which
accordingly becomes the most significant factor expressed by the symptoms.
Under these conditions the love impulse must mask itself as a sadistic impulse.
The compulsion idea must therefore be reinterpreted. Isolated from other
superimposed factors, which though they are not accidental are also
indispensable, it no longer reads: "I want to murder you"; rather it says "I want
to enjoy you in love." Add to this, that simultaneously regression of the object
has also set in, so that this impulse is invariably directed toward the nearest and
dearest persons, and you can imagine with what horror the patient thinks of
these compulsion ideas and how alien they appear to his conscious perception.
In the mechanism of these neuroses, suppression, too, assumes an important
part, which it is not easy to explain in a superficial discussion of this sort.
Regression of the libido without suppression would never result in neurosis but
would finally end in perversion. This makes it obvious that suppression is the
process most characteristic of neurosis, and typifies it most perfectly. Perhaps I
shall at some future time have the opportunity of presenting to you our
knowledge of the mechanism of perversions and then you will see that here
also things do not work themselves out as simply as we should best like to
construe them.
You will most readily reconcile yourself with these elucidations of fixation
and regression, when you consider them as a preface to the investigation of the
etiology of neuroses. Towards this I have only advanced a single fact: that
people become neurotically ill when the possibility of satisfying their libido is
removed, ill with "denial," as I expressed myself, and that their symptoms are
the substitutes for the denied gratification. Of course, that does not mean that
every denial of libidinous satisfaction makes every person neurotic, but merely
that in all cases known of neurosis, the factor of denial was traceable. The
syllogism therefore cannot be reversed. You also understand, I trust, that this
statement is not supposed to reveal the entire secret of the etiology of neurosis,
but only emphasizes an important and indispensable condition.
Now, we do not know, in the further discussion of this statement, whether to
emphasize the nature of denial or the individuality of the person affected by it.
Denial is very rarely complete and absolute; to cause a pathological condition,
the specific gratification desired by the particular person in question must be
withheld, the certain satisfaction of which he alone is capable. On the whole
there are many ways of enduring abstinence from libidinous gratification
without succumbing to a neurosis by reason thereof. Above all we know of
people who are able to endure abstinence without doing themselves injury; they
are not happy under the circumstances, they are filled with yearning, but they
do not become ill. Furthermore, we must take into consideration that the
impulses of the sex instinct are extraordinarily plastic, if I may use that term in
this connection. One thing may take the place of the other; one may assume the
other's intensity; if reality refuses the one gratification, the satisfaction of
another may offer full compensation. The sexual impulses are like a network of
communicating channels filled with fluids; they are this in spite of their
subjugation to the primacy of the genitals, though I realize it is difficult to unite
these two ideas in one conception. The component impulses of sexuality as
well as the total sexual desire, which represents their aggregate, show a marked
ability to change their object, to exchange it, for instance, for one more easily
attainable. This displacement and the readiness to accept substitutes must exert
powerful influences in opposition to the pathological effect of abstinence.
Among these processes which resist the ill effects of abstinence, one in
particular has won cultural significance. Sexual desire relinquishes either its
goal of partial gratification of desire, or the goal of desire toward reproduction,
and adopts another aim, genetically related to the abandoned one, save that it is
no longer sexual but must be termed social. This process is called
"sublimation," and in adopting this process we subscribe to the general standard
which places social aims above selfish sexual desires. Sublimation is, as a
matter of fact, only a special case of the relation of sexual to non-sexual
desires. We shall have occasion to talk more about this later in another
connection.
Now your impression will be that abstinence has become an insignificant
factor, since there are so many methods of enduring it. Yet this is not the case,
for its pathological power is unimpaired. The remedies are generally not
sufficient. The measure of unsatisfied libido which the average human being
can stand is limited. The plasticity and freedom of movement of libido is by no
means retained to the same extent by all individuals; sublimation can,
moreover, never account for more than a certain small fraction of the libido,
and finally most people possess the capacity for sublimation only to a very
slight degree. The most important of these limitations clearly lies in the
adaptability of the libido, as it renders the gratification of the individual
dependent upon the attainment of only a very few aims and objects. Kindly
recall that incomplete development of the libido leaves extensive and possibly
even numerous libido fixations in earlier developmental phases of the processes
of sexual organization and object-finding, and that these phases are usually not
capable of affording a real gratification. You will then recognize libido fixation
as the second powerful factor which together with abstinence constitutes the
causative factors of the illness. We may abbreviate schematically and say that
libido fixation represents the internal disposing factor, abstinence the accidental
external factor of the etiology of neurosis.
I seize the opportunity to warn you of taking sides in a most unnecessary
conflict. In scientific affairs it is a popular proceeding to emphasize a part of
the truth in place of the whole truth and to combat all the rest, which has lost
none of its verity, in the name of that fraction. In this way various factions have
already separated out from the movement of psychoanalysis; one faction
recognizes only the egoistic impulses and denies the sexual, another appreciates
the influence of objective tasks in life, but ignores the part played by the
individual past, and so on. Here is occasion for a similar antithesis and subject
for dispute: are neuroses exogenous or endogenous diseases, are they the
inevitable results of a special constitution or the product of certain harmful
(traumatic) impressions; in particular, are they called forth by libido fixation
(and the sexual constitution which goes with this) or through the pressure of
forbearance? This dilemma seems to me no whit wiser than another I could
present to you: is the child created through the generation of the father or the
conception of the mother? Both factors are equally essential, you will answer
very properly. The conditions which cause neuroses are very similar if not
precisely the same. For the consideration of the causes of neuroses, we may
arrange neurotic diseases in a series, in which two factors, sexual constitution
and experience, or, if you wish, libido-fixation and self-denial, are represented
in such a way that one increases as the other decreases. At one end of the series
are the extreme cases, of which you can say with full conviction: These persons
would have become ill because of the peculiar development of their libido, no
matter what they might have experienced, no matter how gently life might have
treated them. At the other end are cases which would call forth the reversed
judgment, that the patients would undoubtedly have escaped illness if life had
not thrust certain conditions upon them. But in the intermediate cases of the
series, predisposing sexual constitution and subversive demands of life
combine. Their sexual constitution would not have given rise to neurosis if the
victims had not had such experiences, and their experiences would not have
acted upon them traumatically if the conditions of the libido had been
otherwise. Within this series I may grant a certain preponderance to the weight
carried by the predisposing factors, but this admission, too, depends upon the
boundaries within which you wish to delimit nervousness.
Allow me to suggest that you call such series complementary series. We shall
have occasion to establish other series of this sort.
The tenacity with which the libido clings to certain tendencies and objects,
the so-called adhesiveness of the libido, appears to us as an independent factor,
individually variable, the determining conditions of which are completely
unknown to us, but the importance of which for the etiology of the neuroses we
can no longer underestimate. At the same time we must not overestimate the
closeness of this interrelation. A similar adhesiveness of the libido occurs—for
unknown reasons—in normal persons under various conditions, and is a
determining factor in the perverse, who are in a certain sense the opposite of
nervous. Before the period of psychoanalysis, it was known (Binet) that the
anamnesia of the perverse is often traced back to an early impression—an
abnormality in the tendency of the instinct or its choice of object—and it is to
this that the libido of the individual has clung for life. Frequently it is hard to
say how such an impression becomes capable of attracting the libido so
intensively. I shall give you a case of this kind which I observed myself. A
man, to whom the genital and all other sex stimuli of woman now mean
nothing, who in fact can only be thrown into an irresistible sexual excitation by
the sight of a shoe on a foot of a certain form, is able to recall an experience he
had in his sixth year, which proved decisive for the fixation of his libido. One
day he sat on a stool beside his governess, who was to give him an English
lesson. She was an old, shriveled, unbeautiful girl with washed-out blue eyes
and a pug nose, who on this day, because of some injury, had put a velvet
slipper on her foot and stretched it out on a footstool; the leg itself she had most
decorously covered. After a diffident attempt at normal sexual activity,
undertaken during puberty, such a thin sinewy foot as his governess' had
become the sole object of his sexuality; and the man was irresistibly carried
away if other features, reminiscent of the English governess, appeared in
conjunction with the foot. Through this fixation of the libido the man did not
become neurotic but perverse, a foot fetishist, as we say. So you see that,
although exaggerated and premature fixation of the libido is indispensable for
the causation of neuroses, its sphere of action exceeds the limits of neuroses
immeasurably. This condition also, taken by itself, is no more decisive than
abstinence.
And so the problem of the cause of neuroses seems to become more
complicated. Psychoanalytic investigation does, in fact, acquaint us with a new
factor, not considered in our etiological series, which is recognized most easily
in those cases where permanent well-being is suddenly disturbed by an attack
of neurosis. These individuals regularly show signs of contradiction between
their wishes, or, as we are wont to say, indication of psychic conflict. A part of
their personality represents certain wishes, another rebels against them and
resists them. A neurosis cannot come into existence without such conflict. This
may seem to be of small significance. You know that our psychic life is
continually agitated by conflicts for which we must find a solution. Certain
conditions, therefore, must exist to make such a conflict pathological. We want
to know what these conditions are, what psychic powers form the background
for these pathological conflicts, what relation the conflict bears to the causative
factors.
I hope I shall be able to give you satisfactory answers to these questions even
if I must make them schematically brief. Self-denial gives rise to conflict, for
libido deprived of its gratification is forced to seek other means and ends. A
pathogenic conflict arises when these other means and ends arouse the disfavor
of one part of the personality, and a veto ensues which makes the new mode of
gratification impossible for the time being. This is the point of departure for the
development of the symptoms, a process which we shall consider later. The
rejected libidinous desires manage to have their own way, through circuitous
byways, but not without catering to the objections through the observance of
certain symptom-formation; the symptoms are the new or substitute satisfaction
which the condition of self-denial has made necessary.
We can express the significance of the psychic conflict in another way, by
saying: the outer self-denial, in order to become pathological, must be
supplemented by aninner self-denial. Outer denial removes one possibility of
gratification, inner denial would like to exclude another possibility, and it is
this second possibility which becomes the center of the ensuing conflict. I
prefer this form of presentation because it possesses secret content. It implies
the probability that the inner impediment found its origin in the prehistoric
stage of human development in real external hindrances.
What powers are these which interpose objections to libidinous desire, who
are the other parties to the pathological conflict? They are, in the widest sense,
the non-sexual impulses. We call them comprehensively the "ego impulses";
psychoanalysis of transference neuroses does not grant us ready access to their
further investigation, but we learn to know them, in a measure, through the
resistance they offer to analysis. The pathological struggle is waged between
ego-impulses and sexual impulses. In a series of cases it appears as though
conflict could exist between various purely sexual desires; but that is really the
same thing, for of the two sexual desires involved in the conflict, one is always
considerate of the ego, while the other demands that the ego be denied, and so
it remains a conflict between the ego and sexuality.
Again and again when psychoanalysis claimed that psychological event was
the result of sexual impulses, indignant protest was raised that in psychic life
there were other impulses and interests besides the sexual, that everything
could not be derived from sexuality, etc. Well, it is a great pleasure to share for
once the opinion of one's opponents. Psychoanalysis never forgot that non-
sexual impulses exist. It insisted on the decided distinction between sexual and
ego-impulses and maintained in the face of every objection not that neuroses
arise from sexuality, but that they owe their origin to the conflict between
sexuality and the ego. Psychoanalysis can have no reasonable motive for
denying the existence or significance of ego-impulses, even though it
investigates the influence sexual impulses play in illness and in life. Only it has
been destined to deal primarily with sexual impulses, because transference
neuroses have furnished the readiest access to their investigation, and because it
had become obligatory to study what others had neglected.
It does not follow, either, that psychoanalysis has never occupied itself at all
with the non-sexual side of personality. The very distinction of the ego from
sexuality has shown most clearly that the ego-impulses also pass through a
significant development, which is by no means entirely independent of the
development of the libido, nor does it fail to exert a reaction upon it. To be
sure, we know much less about the evolution of the ego than about libido
development, for so far only the study of narcistic neuroses has promised to
throw light on the structure of the ego. There is extant the notable attempt of
Ferenczi to construct theoretically the stages of ego development, and
furthermore we already possess two fixed points from which to proceed in our
evolution of this development. We do not dream of asserting that the libidinous
interests of a person are from the outset opposed to the interests of self-
preservation; in every stage, rather, the ego will strive to remain in harmony
with its sexual organization at that time, and accommodate itself thereto. The
succession of the separate phases of development of libido probably follows a
prescribed program; but we cannot deny that this sequence can be influenced
by the ego, and that a certain parallelism of the phases of development of the
ego and the libido may also be assumed. Indeed, the disturbance of this
parallelism could become a pathological factor. One of the most important
insights we have to gain is the nature of the attitude which the ego exhibits
when an intensive fixation of its libido is left behind in one stage of its
development. It may countenance the fixation and accordingly become perverse
or, what amounts to the same thing, become infantile. Or it may be averse to
this attachment of the libido, the result of which is that wherever the libido is
subject to fixation, there the ego undergoes suppression.
In this way we reach the conclusion that the third factor of the etiology of
neuroses is the tendency to conflict, upon which the development both of the
ego and libido are dependent. Our insight into the causation of the neuroses has
therefore been amplified. First, the most generalized factor, self-denial, then the
fixation of the libido, by which it is forced into certain directions, and thirdly,
the tendency to conflict in the development of the ego, which has rejected
libidinous impulses of this kind. The state of affairs is therefore not so confused
and difficult to see through, as you may have imagined it to be in the course of
my explanation. But of course we are to discover that we have not, as yet,
reached the end. We must add still a new factor and further analyze one we
already know.
To show you the influence of ego development in the formation of a conflict,
and so to give an illustration of the causation of neuroses, I should like to cite
an example which, although it is entirely imaginary, is not far removed from
probability in any respect. Drawing upon the title of a farce by Nestroy, I shall
label this example "On the ground floor and in the first story." The janitor lives
on the ground floor, while the owner of the house, a rich, distinguished man,
occupies the first story. Both have children, and we shall assume that the owner
permits his little daughter to play unwatched with the child of the people. Then
it may easily happen that the games of the children become "naughty," that is,
they assume a sexual character; they play "father and mother," watch each other
in the performance of intimate performances and mutually stimulate their
genitals. The janitor's daughter, who, in spite of her five or six years of age, has
had occasion to make observations on the sexuality of adults, probably played
the part of the seducer. These experiences, even though they be of short
duration, are sufficient to set in motion certain sexual impulses in both children,
which continue in the form of onanism for several years after the common
games have ceased. So far the consequences are similar; the final result will be
very different. The janitor's daughter will continue onanism possibly to the
commencement of her periods, abandon it then without difficulty, not many
years later find a lover, perhaps bear a child, choose this or that path of life,
which may likely enough make of her a popular artist who ends as an aristocrat.
Perhaps the outcome will be less brilliant, but at any rate she will work out her
life, free from neurosis, unharmed by her premature sexual activity. Very
different is the effect on the other child. Even while she is very young she will
realize vaguely that she has done wrong. In a short while, perhaps only after a
violent struggle, she will renounce the gratification of onanism, yet still retain
an undercurrent of depression in her attitude. If, during her early childhood, she
chances to learn something about sexual intercourse, she will turn away in
explicable disgust and seek to remain innocent. Probably she is at the time
subjected anew to an irresistible impulse to onanism, of which she does not
dare to complain. When the time arrives for her to find favor in the eyes of a
man, a neurosis will suddenly develop and cheat her out of marriage and the
joy of life. When analysis succeeds in gaining insight into this neurosis, it will
reveal that this well-bred, intelligent girl of high ideals, has completely
suppressed her sexual desires, but that unconsciously they cling to the meager
experiences she had with the friend of her childhood.
The difference of these two destinies, arising from the same experience, is
due to the fact that one ego has experienced development while the other has
not. The janitor's daughter in later years looks upon sexual intercourse as the
same natural and harmless thing it had seemed in her childhood. The owner's
daughter had experienced the influence of education and had recognized its
claims. Thus stimulated, her ego had forged its ideals of womanly purity and
lack of desire which, however, could not agree with any sexual activity; her
intellectual development had made unworthy her interest in the woman's part
she was to play. This higher moral and intellectual evolution of her ego was in
conflict with the claims of her sexuality.
I should like to consider today one more point in the development of the ego,
partly because it opens wide vistas, partly because it will justify the sharp,
perhaps unnatural line of division we are wont to draw between sexual and ego
impulses. In estimating the several developments of ego and of libido, we must
emphasize an aspect which has not frequently been appreciated heretofore.
Both the ego and the libido are fundamentally heritages, abbreviated repetitions
of an evolution which mankind has, in the course of long periods of time,
traversed from primeval ages. The libido shows its phylogenetic origin most
readily, I should say. Recall, if you please, that in one class of animals the
genital apparatus is closely connected with the mouth, that in another it cannot
be separated from the excretory apparatus, and in others it is attached to organs
of locomotion. Of all these things you will find a most fascinating description
in the valuable book of W. Bölsche. Animals portray, so to speak, all kinds of
perversions which have become set as their permanent sexual organizations. In
man this phylogenetic aspect is partly clouded by the circumstance that these
activities, although fundamentally inherited, are achieved anew in individual
development, presumably because the same conditions still prevail and still
continue to exert their influence on each personality. I should say that
originally they served to call forth an activity, where they now serve only as a
stimulus for recollection. There is no doubt that in addition the course of
development in each individual, which has been innately determined, may be
disturbed or altered from without by recent influences. That power which has
forced this development upon mankind, and which today maintains the
identical pressure, is indeed known to us: it is the same self-denial enforced by
the realities—or, given its big and actual name, Necessity, the struggle for
existence, the ’Ανἁγχη. This has been a severe teacher, but under him we have
become potent. The neurotics are those children upon whom this severity has
had a bad effect—but there is risk in all education. This appreciation of the
struggle of life as the moving force of development need not prejudice us
against the importance of "innate tendencies in evolution" if their existence can
be proved.
It is worth noting that sexual instincts and instincts of self-preservation do
not behave similarly when they are confronted with the necessities of actuality.
It is easier to educate the instincts of self-preservation and everything that is
connected with them; they speedily learn to adapt themselves to necessity and
to arrange their development in accordance with the mandates of fact. That is
easy to understand, for they cannot procure the objects they require in any other
way; without these objects the individual must perish. The sex instincts are
more difficult to educate because at the outset they do not suffer from the need
of an object. As they are related almost parasitically to the other functions of
the body and gratify themselves auto-erotically by way of their own body, they
are at first withdrawn from the educational influence of real necessity. In most
people, they maintain themselves in some way or other during the entire course
of life as those characteristics of obstinacy and inaccessibility to influence
which are generally collectively called unreasonableness. The education of
youth generally comes to an end when the sexual demands are aroused to their
full strength. Educators know this and act accordingly; but perhaps the results
of psychoanalysis will influence them to transfer the greatest emphasis to the
education of the early years, of childhood, beginning with the suckling. The
little human being is frequently a finished product in his fourth or fifth year,
and only reveals gradually in later years what has long been ready within him.
To appreciate the full significance of the aforementioned difference between
the two groups of instincts, we must digress considerably and introduce a
consideration which we must needs call economic. Thereby we enter upon one
of the most important but unfortunately one of the most obscure domains of
psychoanalysis. We ask ourselves whether a fundamental purpose is
recognizable in the workings of our psychological apparatus, and answer
immediately that this purpose is the pursuit of pleasurable excitement. It seems
as if our entire psychological activity were directed toward gaining pleasurable
stimulation, toward avoiding painful ones; that it is regulated automatically by
the principle of pleasure. Now we should like to know, above all, what
conditions cause the creation of pleasure and pain, but here we fall short. We
may only venture to say that pleasurable excitation in some way involves
lessening, lowering or obliterating the amount of stimuli present in the psychic
apparatus. This amount, on the other hand, is increased by pain. Examination of
the most intense pleasurable excitement accessible to man, the pleasure which
accompanies the performance of the sexual act, leaves small doubt on this
point. Since such processes of pleasure are concerned with the destinies of
quantities of psychic excitation or energy, we call considerations of this sort
economic. It thus appears that we can describe the tasks and performances of
the psychic apparatus in different and more generalized terms than by the
emphasis of the pursuit of pleasure. We may say that the psychic apparatus
serves the purpose of mastering and bringing to rest the mass of stimuli and the
stimulating forces which approach it. The sexual instincts obviously show their
aim of pleasurable excitement from the beginning to the end of their
development; they retain this original function without much change. The ego
instincts strive at first for the same thing. But through the influence of their
teacher, necessity, the ego instincts soon learn to adduce some qualification to
the principle of pleasure. The task of avoiding pain becomes an objective
almost comparable to the gain of pleasure; the ego learns that its direct
gratification is unavoidably withheld, the gain of pleasurable excitement
postponed, that always a certain amount of pain must be borne and certain
sources of pleasure entirely relinquished. This educated ego has become
"reasonable." It is no longer controlled by the principle of pleasure, but by
the principle of fact, which at bottom also aims at pleasure, but pleasure which
is postponed and lessened by considerations of fact.
 The transition from the pleasure principle to that of fact is the most important
advance in the development of the ego. We already know that the sexual
instincts pass through this stage unwillingly and late. We shall presently learn
the consequence to man of the fact that his sexuality admits of such a loose
relation to the external realities of his life. Yet one more observation belongs
here. Since the ego of man has, like the libido, its history of evolution, you will
not be surprised to hear that there are "ego-regressions," and you will want to
know what role this return of the ego to former phases of development plays in
neurotic disease.

TWENTY-THIRD LECTURE

GENERAL THEORY OF THE NEUROSES

The Development of the Symptoms

IN the layman's eyes the symptom shows the nature of the disease, and cure
means removal of symptoms. The physician, however, finds it important to
distinguish the symptoms from the disease and recognizes that doing away with
the symptoms is not necessarily curing the disease. Of course, the only tangible
thing left over after the removal of the symptoms is the capacity to build new
symptoms. Accordingly, for the time being, let us accept the layman's
viewpoint and consider the understanding of the symptoms as equivalent to the
understanding of the sickness.
The symptoms,—of course, we are dealing here with psychic (or
psychogenic) symptoms, and psychic illness—are acts which are detrimental to
life as a whole, or which are at least useless; frequently they are obnoxious to
the individual who performs them and are accompanied by distaste and
suffering. The principal injury lies in the psychic exertion which they cost, and
in the further exertion needed to combat them. The price these efforts exact
may, when there is an extensive development of the symptoms, bring about an
extraordinary impoverishment of the personality of the patient with respect to
his available psychic energy, and consequently cripple him in all the important
tasks of life. Since such an outcome is dependent on the amount of energy so
utilized, you will readily understand that "being sick" is essentially a practical
concept. But if you take a theoretical standpoint and disregard these
quantitative relations, you can readily say that we are all sick, or rather
neurotic, since the conditions favorable to the development of symptoms are
demonstrable also among normal persons.
 As to the neurotic symptoms, we already know that they are the result of a
conflict aroused by a new form of gratifying the libido. The two forces that
have contended against each other meet once more in the symptom; they
become reconciled through the compromise of a symptom development. That is
why the symptom is capable of such resistance; it is sustained from both sides.
We also know that one of the two partners to the conflict is the unsatisfied
libido, frustrated by reality, which must now seek other means for its
satisfaction. If reality remains inflexible even where the libido is prepared to
take another object in place of the one denied it, the libido will then finally be
compelled to resort to regression and to seek gratification in one of the earlier
stages in its organizations already out-lived, or by means of one of the objects
given up in the past. Along the path of regression the libido is enticed by
fixations which it has left behind at these stages in its development.
Here the development toward perversion branches off sharply from that of
the neuroses. If the regressions do not awaken the resistance of the ego, then a
neurosis does not follow and the libido arrives at some actual, even if
abnormal, satisfaction. The ego, however, controls not alone consciousness, but
also the approaches to motor innervation, and hence the realization of psychic
impulses. If the ego then does not approve this regression, the conflict takes
place. The libido is locked out, as it were, and must seek refuge in some place
where it can find an outlet for its fund of energy, in accordance with the
controlling demands for pleasurable gratification. It must withdraw from the
ego. Such an evasion is offered by the fixations established in the course of its
evolution and now traversed regressively, against which the ego had, at the
time, protected itself by suppressions. The libido, streaming back, occupies
these suppressed positions and thus withdraws from before the ego and its laws.
At the same time, however, it throws off all the influences acquired under its
tutelage. The libido could be guided so long as there was a possibility of its
being satisfied; under the double pressure of external and internal denial it
becomes unruly and harks back to former and more happy times. Such is its
character, fundamentally unchangeable. The ideas which the libido now takes
over in order to hold its energy belong to the system of the unconscious, and
are therefore subject to its peculiar processes, especially elaboration and
displacement. Conditions are set up here which are entirely comparable to those
of dream formation. Just as the latent dream, the fulfillment of a wish-phantasy,
is first built up in the unconsciousness, but must then pass through conscious
processes before, censored and approved, it can enter into the compromise
construction of the manifest dream, so the ideas representing the libido in the
unconscious must still contend against the power of the fore-conscious ego.
The opposition that has arisen against it in the ego follows it down by a
"counter-siege" and forces it to choose such an expression as will serve at the
same time to express itself. Thus, then, the symptom comes into being as a
much distorted offshoot from the unconscious libidinous wish-fulfillment, an
artificially selected ambiguity—with two entirely contradictory meanings. In
this last point alone do we realize a difference between dream and symptom
development, for the only fore-conscious purpose in dream formation is the
maintenance of sleep, the exclusion from consciousness of anything which may
disturb sleep; but it does not necessarily oppose the unconscious wish impulse
with an insistent "No." Quite the contrary; the purpose of the dream may be
more tolerant, because the situation of the sleeper is a less dangerous one. The
exit to reality is closed only through the condition of sleep.
You see, this evasion which the libido finds under the conditions of the
conflict is possible only by virtue of the existing fixations. When these
fixations are taken in hand by the regression, the suppression is side-tracked
and the libido, which must maintain itself under the conditions of the
compromise, is led off or gratified. By means of such a detour by way of the
unconscious and the old fixations, the libido has at last succeeded in breaking
its way through to some sort of gratification, however extraordinarily limited
this may seem and however unrecognizable any longer as a genuine
satisfaction. Now allow me to add two further remarks concerning this final
result. In the first place, I should like you to take note of the intimate
connection between the libido and the unconscious on the one hand, and on the
other of the ego, consciousness, and reality. The connection that is evidenced
here, however, does not indicate that originally they in any way belong
together. I should like you to bear continually in mind that everything I have
said here, and all that will follow, pertains only to the symptom development of
hysterical neurosis.
Where, now, can the libido find the fixations which it must have in order to
force its way through the suppressions? In the activities and experiences of
infantile sexuality, in its abandoned component-impulses, its childish objects
which have been given up. The libido again returns to them. The significance
of this period of childhood is a double one; on the one hand, the instinctive
tendencies which were congenital in the child first showed themselves at this
time; secondly, at the same time, environmental influences and chance
experiences were first awakening his other instincts. I believe our right to
establish this bipartite division cannot be questioned. The assertion that the
innate disposition plays a part is hardly open to criticism, but analytic
experience actually makes it necessary for us to assume that purely accidental
experiences of childhood are capable of leaving fixations of the libido. I do not
see any theoretical difficulties here. Congenital tendencies undoubtedly
represent the after-effects of the experiences of an earlier ancestry; they must
also have once been acquired; without such acquired characters there could be
no heredity. And is it conceivable that the inheritance of such acquired
characters comes to a standstill in the very generation that we have under
observation? The significance of infantile experience, however, should not, as
is so often done, be completely ignored as compared with ancestral experiences
or those of our adult years; on the contrary, they should meet with an especial
appreciation. They have such important results because they occur in the period
of uncompleted development, and because of this very fact are in a position to
cause a traumatic effect. The researches on the mechanics of development by
Roux and others have shown us that a needle prick into an embryonic cell mass
which is undergoing division results in most serious developmental
disturbances. The same injury to a larva or a completed animal can be borne
without injury.
The libido fixation of adults, which we have referred to as representative of
the constitutional factor in the etiological comparison of the neuroses, can be
thought of, so far as we are concerned, as divisible into two separate factors,
the inherited disposition and the tendency acquired in early childhood. We
know that a schematic representation is most acceptable to the student. Let us
combine these relations as follows:

Disposition as
accidental
determined
Cause of the experiences
== by +
neurosis (traumatic
libido fixation
element)
|

       

Sexual constitution
Infantile
(pre-historic  
experience
experience)

The hereditary sexual constitution provides us with manifold tendencies,

varying with the special emphasis given one or the other component of the
instinct, either individually or in combination. With the factor of infantile
experience, there is again built up a complementary series within the sexual
constitution which is perfectly comparable with our first series, namely, the
gradations between disposition and the chance experiences of the adult. Here
again we find the same extreme cases and similar relations in the matter of
substitution. At this point the question becomes pertinent as to whether the
most striking regressions of the libido, those which hark back to very early
stages in sexual organization, are not essentially conditioned by the hereditary
constitutional factor. The answer to this question, however, may best be put off
until we are in a position to consider a wider range in the forms of neurotic
disease.
Let us devote a little time to the consideration of the fact that analytic
investigation of neurotics shows the libido to be bound up with the infantile
sexual experiences of these persons. In this light they seem of enormous
importance for both the life and health of mankind. With respect to therapeutic
work their importance remains undiminished. But when we do not take this into
account we can herein readily recognize the danger of being misled by the
situation as it exists in neurotics into adopting a mistaken and one-sided
orientation toward life. In figuring the importance of the infantile experiences
we must also subtract the influences arising from the fact that the libido has
returned to them by regression, after having been forced out of its later
positions. Thus we approach the opposite conclusion, that experiences of the
libido had no importance whatever in their own time, but rather acquired it at
the time of regression. You will remember that we were led to a similar
alternative in the discussion of the Oedipus-complex.
A decision on this matter will hardly be difficult for us. The statement is
undoubtedly correct that the hold which the infantile experiences have on the
libido—with the pathogenic influences this involves—is greatly augmented by
the regression; still, to allow them to become definitive would nevertheless be
misleading. Other considerations must be taken into account as well. In the first
place, observation shows, in a way that leaves no room for doubt, that infantile
experiences have their particular significance which is evidenced already
during childhood. There are, furthermore, neuroses in children in which the
factor of displacement in time is necessarily greatly minimized or is entirely
lacking, since the illness follows as an immediate consequence of the traumatic
experience. The study of these infantile neuroses keeps us from many
dangerous misunderstandings of adult neuroses, just as the dreams of children
similarly serve as the key to the understanding of the dreams of adults. As a
matter of fact, the neuroses of children are very frequent, far more frequent
than is generally believed. They are often overlooked, dismissed as signs of
badness or naughtiness, and often suppressed by the authority of the nursery; in
retrospect, however, they may be easily recognized later. They occur most
frequently in the form of anxiety hysteria. What this implies we shall learn
upon another occasion. When a neurosis breaks out in later life, analysis
regularly shows that it is a direct continuation of that infantile malady which
had perhaps developed only obscurely and incipiently. However, there are
cases, as already stated, in which this childish nervousness continues, without
any interruption, as a lifelong affliction. We have been able to analyze a very
few examples of such neuroses during childhood, while they were actually
going on; much more often we had to be satisfied with obtaining our insight
into the childhood neurosis subsequently, when the patient is already well along
in life, under conditions in which we are forced to work with certain corrections
and under definite precautions.
Secondly, we must admit that the universal regression of the libido to the
period of childhood would be inexplicable if there were nothing there which
could exert an attraction for it. The fixation which we assume to exist towards
specific developmental phases, conveys a meaning only if we think of it as
stabilizing a definite amount of libidinous energy. Finally, I am able to remind
you that here there exists a complementary relationship between the intensity
and the pathogenic significance of the infantile experiences to the later ones
which is similar to that studied in previous series. There are cases in which the
entire causal emphasis falls upon the sexual experiences of childhood, in which
these impressions take on an effect which is unmistakably traumatic and in
which no other basis exists for them beyond what the average sexual
constitution and its immaturity can offer. Side by side with these there are
others in which the whole stress is brought to bear by the later conflicts, and the
emphasis the analysis places on childhood impressions appears entirely as the
work of regression. There are also extremes of "retarded development" and
"regression," and between them every combination in the interaction of the two
factors.
These relations have a certain interest for that pedagogy which assumes as its
object the prevention of neuroses by an early interference in the sexual
development of the child. So long as we keep our attention fixed essentially on
the infantile sexual experiences, we readily come to believe we have done
everything for the prophylaxis of nervous afflictions when we have seen to it
that this development is retarded, and that the child is spared this type of
experience. Yet we already know that the conditions for the causation of
neuroses are more complicated and cannot in general be influenced through one
single factor. The strict protection in childhood loses its value because it is
powerless against the constitutional factor; furthermore, it is more difficult to
carry out than the educators imagine, and it brings with it two new dangers that
cannot be lightly dismissed. It accomplishes too much, for it favors a degree of
sexual suppression which is harmful for later years, and it sends the child into
life without the power to resist the violent onset of sexual demands that must be
expected during puberty. The profit, therefore, which childhood prophylaxis
can yield is most dubious; it seems, indeed, that better success in the prevention
of neuroses can be gained by attacking the problem through a changed attitude
toward facts.
 Let us return to the consideration of the symptoms. They serve as substitutes
for the gratification which has been forborne, by a regression of the libido to
earlier days, with a return to former development phases in their choice of
object and in their organization. We learned some time ago that the neurotic is
held fast somewhere in his past; we now know that it is a period of his past in
which his libido did not miss the satisfaction which made him happy. He looks
for such a time in his life until he has found it, even though he must hark back
to his suckling days as he retains them in his memory or as he reconstructs
them in the light of later influences. The symptom in some way again yields the
old infantile form of satisfaction, distorted by the censoring work of the
conflict. As a rule it is converted into a sensation of suffering and fused with
other causal elements of the disease. The form of gratification which the
symptom yields has much about it that alienates one's sympathy. In this we
omit to take into account, however, the fact that the patients do not recognize
the gratification as such and experience the apparent satisfaction rather as
suffering, and complain of it. This transformation is part of the psychic conflict
under the pressure of which the symptom must be developed. What was at one
time a satisfaction for the individual must now awaken his antipathy or disgust.
We know a simple but instructive example for such a change of feeling. The
same child that sucked the milk with such voracity from its mother's breast is
apt to show a strong antipathy for milk a few years later, which is often difficult
to overcome. This antipathy increases to the point of disgust when the milk, or
any substituted drink, has a little skin over it. It is rather hard to throw out the
suggestion that this skin calls up the memory of the mother's breast, which was
once so intensely coveted. In the meantime, to be sure, the traumatic experience
of weaning has intervened.
There is something else that makes the symptoms appear remarkable and
inexplicable as a means of libidinous satisfaction. They in no way recall
anything from which we normally are in the habit of expecting satisfaction.
They usually require no object, and thereby give up all connection with
external reality. We understand this to be a result of turning away from fact and
of returning to the predominance of pleasurable gratification. But it is also a
return to a sort of amplified autoeroticism, such as was yielded the sex impulse
in its earliest satisfactions. In the place of a modification in the outside world,
we have a physical change, in other words, an internal reaction in place of an
external one, an adjustment instead of an activity. Viewed from a phylogenetic
standpoint, this expresses a very significant regression. We will grasp this
better when we consider it in connection with a new factor which we are still to
discover from the analytic investigation of symptom development. Further, we
recall that in symptom formation the same processes of the unconscious have
been at work as in dream formation—elaboration and displacement. Similarly
to the dream, the symptom represents a fulfillment, a satisfaction after the
manner of the infantile; by the utmost elaboration this satisfaction can be
compressed into a single sensation or innervation, or by extreme displacement
it may be restricted to a tiny element of the entire libidinous complex. It is no
wonder that we often have difficulties in recognizing in the symptom the
libidinous satisfaction which we anticipate and always find verified.
I have indicated that we must still become familiar with a new factor. It is
something really surprising and confusing. You know that by analysis of the
symptoms we arrive at a knowledge of the infantile experiences upon which the
libido is fixated and out of which the symptoms are formed. Well, the
surprising thing is this, that these infantile scenes are not always true. Indeed, in
the majority of cases they are untrue, and in some instances they are directly
contrary to historical truth. You see that this discovery, as no other, serves
either to discredit the analysis which has led to such a result, or to discredit the
patients upon whose testimony the analysis, as well as the whole understanding
of neuroses, is built up. In addition there is something else utterly confusing
about it. If the infantile experiences, revealed by analysis, were in every case
real, we should have the feeling of walking on sure ground; if they were
regularly falsified, disclosed themselves as inventions or phantasies of the
patients, we should have to leave this uncertain ground and find a surer footing
elsewhere. But it is neither the one nor the other, for when we look into the
matter we find that the childhood experiences which are recalled or
reconstructed in the course of the analysis may in some in some instances be
false, in others undeniably true, and in the majority of cases a mixture of truth
and fiction. The symptoms then are either the representation of actual
experiences to which we may ascribe an influence in the fixation of the libido,
or the representation of phantasies of the patient which, of course, can be of no
etiological significance. It is hard to find one's way here. The first foothold is
given perhaps by an analogous discovery, namely, that the same scattered
childhood memories that individuals always have had and have been conscious
of prior to an analysis may be falsified as well, or at least may contain a
generous mixture of true and false. Evidence of error very seldom offers
difficulties, and we at least gain the satisfaction of knowing that the blame for
this unexpected disappointment is not to be laid at the door of analysis, but in
some way upon the patients.
After reflecting a bit we can easily understand what is so confusing in this
matter. It is the slight regard for reality, the neglect to keep fact distinct from
phantasy. We are apt to feel insulted that the patient has wasted our time with
invented tales. There is an enormous gap in our thinking between reality and
invention and we accord an entirely different valuation to reality. The patient,
too, takes this same viewpoint in his normal thinking. When he offers the
material which, by way of the symptom, leads back to the wish situations
which are modeled upon the childhood experiences, we are at first, to be sure,
in doubt whether we are dealing with reality or with phantasy. Later certain
traits determine this decision; we are confronted with the task of acquainting
the patient with them. This can never be accomplished without difficulty. If at
the outset we tell him that he is going to reveal phantasies with which he has
veiled his childhood history, just as every people weaves myths around its
antiquity, we notice (to our comfort) that his interest in the further pursuit of
the subject suddenly diminishes. He, too, wants to discover realities, and
despises all "notions." But if until this is accomplished we allow him to believe
that we are investigating the actual occurrences of his childhood, we run the
risk of later being charged with error and with our apparent gullibility. For a
long time he is unable to reconcile himself to the idea of considering phantasy
and reality on equal terms and he tends, with reference to the childish
experiences to be explained, to neglect for the time being the difference
between the real and the imaginary. And yet this is obviously the only correct
attitude toward these psychological products because they are, in a sense, real.
It is a fact that the patient is able to create such phantasies for himself, and this
is of scarcely less importance for his neurosis than if he had really undergone
the experience which he imagines. These phantasies
possess psychological reality in contrast to physical reality, and so we
gradually come to understand that in the realm of neuroses the psychological
reality is the determining factor.
Among the experiences which recur continually in the early history of
neurotics and, in fact, are never lacking, some are of particular significance and
accordingly I consider them worthy of special treatment. I shall enumerate a
few examples of this species: observation of the parental intercourse, seduction
by an adult, and the threat of castration. It would be a grievous error to assume
that physical reality can never be accorded them; this may often be proved
beyond doubt by the testimony of adult relatives. So, for example, it is not at all
unusual if the little boy who begins to play with his penis, and does not yet
know that one must conceal this, is threatened by his parents or nurse with the
cutting off of the organ or the guilty hand. Parents often admit upon
questioning that they thought they had done the right thing by this intimidation;
many individuals retain a correct, conscious memory of these threats, especially
if it has occurred in later childhood. When the mother or some other woman
makes the threat she usually delegates the responsibility of executing it to the
father or to the doctor. In the famous Struwelpeter by the pediatrist Hoffman, of
Frankfort, rhymes which owe their popularity to his very fine understanding of
the sexual and other complexes of childhood, you find a milder substitute for
castration in the cutting off of the thumbs as a punishment for insistent sucking.
But it is highly improbable that the threat of castration is actually made as often
as it occurs in the analyses of neurotics. We are content to understand that the
child imaginatively constructs this threat for himself from suggestions, from the
knowledge that auto-erotic satisfaction is forbidden, and from the impression of
castration he has received in discovering the female genital. It is, moreover, in
no way impossible that the little child, so long as he is not credited with any
understanding or memory, will, even in families outside the proletariat, become
a witness to the sexual act between his parents or some other group-ups, and it
cannot be disproved that the child subsequently understands this impression,
and may react upon it. But when this intercourse is described with minute
details which could hardly have been observed, or if it turns out to be, as it so
frequently does, an intercourse which was not face to face, more ferarum, there
is no longer any doubt that this phantasy is derived from the observation of the
intercourse of animals (dogs) and the unsatisfied curiosity of the child in his
period of puberty. The greatest feat of the imagination is the phantasy of having
witnessed the coitus of the parents while still unborn in the mother's womb. Of
especial interest is the phantasy of having been seduced, because so often it is
not a phantasy at all, but a real memory. But luckily it is not real so often as
first appears from the results of analysis. Seduction by older children, or
children of the same age, is much more frequent than seduction by adults, and
if, in the case of little girls, the father quite regularly appears as the seducer in
the occurrences which they relate, neither the fantastic nature of this accusation
nor its motive can be doubted. The child as a rule covers the autoerotic period
of his sexual activity, where there has been no actual seduction, with the
seduction-phantasy. He spares himself the shame of onanism by imagining the
presence of an object for his desires in that early period. As a matter of fact,
you must not be misled in attributing sexual misuse of the child by its nearest
male relatives solely and always to phantasy. Most analysts have probably
treated cases in which such relations were real and could be proved beyond
doubt, with the qualification that in such cases they belong to the later years of
childhood and were transposed to an earlier time.
We cannot avoid the impression that such experiences of childhood are in
some way necessary to the neurosis, that they are claimed by its iron rule. If
they exist in reality, then well and good, but if reality has withheld them they
are constructed from suggestions and supplemented by the imagination. The
result is the same, and to this day we have been unable to trace any difference
in the results, whether fancy or fact played the larger part in these childish
occurrences. Here again we encounter one of the complementary relationships
so frequently met with; it is, to be sure, the most estranging of all those we have
become acquainted with. Whence comes the need for thesephantasies, and the
material for them? There can be no doubt as to the sources of the impulse, but
we must explain why the same phantasies are always created with the same
content. I have an answer in readiness which I know you will think very far-
fetched. I am of the opinion that these primal phantasies—so I should like to
term these, and certainly some others also—are a phylogenetic possession. In
them the individual reaches out beyond his own life, into the experiences of
antiquity, where his own experience has become all too rudimentary. It seems
very possible to me that everything which is obtained during an analysis in the
guise of phantasy, the seduction of children, the release of sexual excitement by
watching parental intercourse, the threat of castration—or rather castration
itself—were once realities in the primeval existence of mankind and that the
imaginative child is merely filling in the gaps of individual truth with
prehistoric truth. We have again and again suspected that the psychology of
neuroses stores up more of the antiquities of human development than all other
sources.
What we have just discussed makes it necessary for us to enter further into
the origin and significance of that mental activity that is called imagination. As
you well know, it enjoys universal esteem, although we have never clearly
understood its place in the psychic life. I have this much to say about it. As you
know, the ego of man is slowly educated by the influence of external necessity
to an appreciation of reality and a pursuit of the principle of reality, and must
therefore renounce temporarily or permanently various objects and goals of its
strivings for satisfaction, sexual and otherwise. But renunciation of gratification
has always been difficult for man. He cannot accomplish it without something
in the nature of compensation. Accordingly he has reserved for himself a
psychological activity wherein all these abandoned sources of pleasures and
means of pleasurable gratification are granted a further existence, a form of
existence in which they are freed from the requirements of reality and what we
like to call the test of reality. Every impulse is soon transformed into the form
of its own fulfillment. There is no doubt that dwelling on the imagined
fulfillment of a given wish affords some satisfaction, although the realization
that it is unreal is unobscured. In the activity of the imagination, man enjoys
that freedom from external compulsion that he has long since renounced. He
has made it possible to be alternately a pleasure-seeking animal and a reasoning
human being. He finds that the scant satisfaction that he can force out of reality
is not enough. "There is no getting along without auxiliary-constructions," Th.
Fontaine once said. The creation of the psychic realm of fancy has its complete
counterpart in the establishment of "preserves" and "conservation projects" in
those places where the demands of husbandry, traffic and industry threaten
quickly to change the original face of the earth into something unrecognizable.
The national reserves maintain this old condition of things, which otherwise has
everywhere been regretfully sacrificed to necessity. Everything may grow and
spread there as it will, even that which is useless and harmful. The psychic
realm of phantasy is such a reservation withdrawn from the principles of
reality.
The best known productions of phantasy are the so-called "day dreams,"
which we already know, pictured satisfactions of ambitious, of covetous and
erotic wishes, which flourish the more grandly the more reality admonishes
them to modesty and patience. There is unmistakably shown in them the nature
of imaginative happiness, the restoration of the independence of pleasurable
gratification from the acquiescence of reality. We know such day dreams are
nuclei and models for the dreams of night. The night dream is essentially
nothing but a day dream, distorted by the nocturnal forms of psychological
activity, and made available by the freedom which the night gives to instinctive
impulses. We have already become acquainted with the idea that a day dream is
not necessarily conscious, that there are also unconscious day dreams. Such
unconscious day dreams are as much the source of night dreams as of neurotic
symptoms.
The significance of phantasy for the development of symptoms will become
clear to you by the following: We have said that in a case of renunciation, the
libido occupies regressively the positions once abandoned by it, to which,
nevertheless, it has clung in certain ways. We shall neither retract this statement
nor correct it, but we shall insert a missing link. How does the libido find its
way to these points of fixation? Well, every object and tendency of the libido
that has been abandoned, is not abandoned in every sense of the word. They, or
their derivatives, are still held in presentations of the phantasy, with a certain
degree of intensity. The libido need only retire to the imagination in order to
find from them the open road to all suppressed fixations. These phantasies were
happy under a sort of tolerance, there was no conflict between them and the
ego, no matter how acute the contrast, so long as a certain condition was
observed—a condition quantitative in nature that is now disturbed by the
flowing back of the libido to the phantasies. By this addition the accumulation
of energy in the phantasies is heightened to such a degree that they become
assertive and develop a pressure in the direction of realization. But that makes a
conflict between them and the ego inevitable. Whether formerly conscious or
unconscious, they now are subject to suppression by the ego and are victims to
the attraction of the unconscious. The libido wanders from phantasies now
unconscious to their sources in unconsciousness, and back to its own points of
fixation.
The return of the libido to phantasy is an intermediate step on the road to
symptom development and well deserves a special designation. C. G. Jung
coined for it the very appropriate name of introversion, but inappropriately he
also lets it stand for other things. Let us therefore retain the idea that
introversion signifies the turning aside of the libido from the possibilities of
actual satisfaction and the excessive accumulation of the phantasies hitherto
tolerated as harmless. An introvert is not yet a neurotic, but he finds himself in
a labile situation; he must develop symptoms at the next dislocation of forces, if
he does not find other outlets for his pent-up libido. The intangible nature of
neurotic satisfaction and the neglect of the difference between imagination and
reality are already determined by arrest in the phase of introversion.
You have certainly noticed that in the last discussions I have introduced a
new factor into the structure of the etiological chain, namely, the quantity, the
amount of energy that comes under consideration. We must always take this
factor into account. Purely qualitative analysis of the etiological conditions is
not sufficient. Or, to put it in another way, a dynamic conception alone of these
psychic processes is not enough; there is need of an economic viewpoint. We
must say to ourselves that the conflict between two impulses is not released
before certain occupation-intensities have been reached, even though the
qualitative conditions have long been potent. Similarly, the pathogenic
significance of the constitutional factors is guided by how much more of a
given component impulse is present in the predisposition over and above that of
another; one can even conceive the predispositions of all men to be
qualitatively the same and to be differentiated only by these quantitative
conditions. The quantitative factor is no less important for the power of
resistance against neurotic ailments. It depends upon what amount of unused
libido a person can hold freely suspended, and upon how large a fraction of the
libido he is able to direct from the sexual path to the goal of sublimation. The
final goal of psychological activity, which may be described qualitatively as
striving towards pleasure-acquisition and avoidance of unpleasantness, presents
itself in the light of economic considerations as the task of overcoming the
gigantic stimuli at work in the psychological apparatus, and to prevent those
obstructions which cause unpleasantness.
So much I wanted to tell you about symptom development in the neuroses.
Yes, but do not let me neglect to emphasize this especially: everything I have
said here relates to the symptom development in hysteria. Even in compulsion
neuroses, which retain the same fundamentals, much is found that is different.
The counter-siege directed against the claims of the instincts, of which we have
spoken in connection with hysteria, press to the fore in compulsion neuroses,
and control the clinical picture by means of so-called "reaction-formations."
The same kind and more far-reaching variations are discoverable among the
other neuroses, where the investigations as to the mechanism of symptom
development have in no way been completed.
Before I leave you today I should like to have your attention for a while for
an aspect of imaginative life which is worthy of the most general interest. For
there is a way back from imagination to reality and that is—art. The artist is an
incipient introvert who is not far from being a neurotic. He is impelled by too
powerful instinctive needs. He wants to achieve honor, power, riches, fame and
the love of women. But he lacks the means of achieving these satisfactions. So
like any other unsatisfied person, he turns away from reality, and transfers all
his interests, his libido, too, to the elaboration of his imaginary wishes, all of
which might easily point the way to neurosis. A great many factors must
combine to present this termination of his development; it is well known how
often artists especially suffer from a partial inhibition of their capacities
through neurosis. Apparently their constitutions are strongly endowed with an
ability to sublimize and to shift the suppression determining their conflicts. The
artist finds the way back to reality in this way. He is not the only one who has a
life of imagination. The twilight-realm of phantasy is upheld by the sanction of
humanity and every hungry soul looks here for help and sympathy. But for
those who are not artists, the ability to obtain satisfaction from imaginative
sources is very restricted. Their relentless suppressions force them to be
satisfied with the sparse day dreams which may become conscious. If one is a
real artist he has more at his disposal. In the first place, he understands how to
elaborate his day dreams so that they lose their essentially personal element,
which would repel strangers, and yield satisfaction to others as well. He also
knows how to disguise them so that they do not easily disclose their origin in
their despised sources. He further possesses the puzzling ability of molding a
specific material into a faithful image of the creatures of his imagination, and
then he is able to attach to this representation of his unconscious phantasies so
much pleasurable gratification that, for a time at least, it is able to outweigh and
release the suppressions. If he is able to accomplish all this, he makes it
possible for others, in their return, to obtain solace and consolation from their
own unconscious sources of gratification which had become inaccessible. He
wins gratitude and admiration for himself and so, by means of his imagination,
achieves the very things which had at first only an imaginary existence for him:
honor, power, and the love of women.

TWENTY-FOURTH LECTURE

GENERAL THEORY OF THE NEUROSES

Ordinary Nervousness

IN our last discussion we accomplish a difficult task. Now I shall temporarily

leave our subject and address myself to you.
 For I know quite well that you are dissatisfied. You thought that an
introduction to psychoanalysis would be quite a different matter. You expected
to hear vivid illustrations instead of theories. You will tell me that when I gave
you the illustration of "on the ground floor in the first story," you had grasped
something of the causation of neurosis, only of course this should have been a
real observation and not an imaginary story. Or, when in the beginning I
described two symptoms (not imaginary also, let us hope) whose analysis
revealed a close connection with the life of the patient, you first came to grasp
the meaning of the symptoms and you hoped that I would proceed in the same
way. Instead I have given you theories—lengthy, difficult to see in perspective
and incomplete, to which something new was constantly being added. I worked
with conceptions that I had not previously presented to you, abandoned
descriptive for dynamic conceptions, and these in turn for economic ones. I
made it hard for you to understand how many of the artificial terms I made use
of still carry the same meaning and are used interchangeably only for the sake
of euphony. Finally, I allowed broad conceptions to pass in review before you:
the principles of pleasure and of fact and their phylogenetically inherited
possession; and then, instead of introducing you to definite facts, I allowed
them to become increasingly vague till they seemed to fade into dim distances.
Why did I not begin my introduction to the theory of neurosis with the facts
that you yourselves know about nervousness, with something that has always
aroused your interest, with the peculiar temperament of nervous people, their
incomprehensible reactions to external influences, to human intercourse, their
irritability, their uselessness? Why did I not lead you step by step from the
understanding of simple, everyday forms to the problems of mysterious and
extreme manifestations of nervousness?
I cannot even say that you are wrong. I am not so infatuated with my art of
representation as to see some special attraction in every blemish. I myself
believe that I could have proceeded differently, to your better advantage, and
this indeed had been my intention. But one cannot always carry out one's
sensible intentions. The nature of the subject matter issues its own commands,
and easily modifies our plans. Even so usual a performance as the organization
of well-known material is not entirely subject to the particular purposes of the
author. It forms itself as it will and later one wonders why it turned out so and
not otherwise.
Probably one of the reasons is that the title, A General Introduction to
Psychoanalysis, no longer applies to this part, which deals with the neuroses.
The introduction to psychoanalysis is found in the study of errors and the
dream; the theory of neurosis is psychoanalysis itself. I do not think that in so
short a time I could have given you a knowledge of the theory of neurosis other
than in concentrated form. It was necessary to present to you connectedly the
meaning and interpretation of the symptoms, their external and internal
conditions and their bearing on the mechanism of symptom formation. This I
have attempted to do; it is practically the nucleus of the material that modern
psychoanalysis is able to offer. We had to say quite a good deal concerning the
libido and its development, and something as well concerning the development
of the ego. The introduction had already prepared you for the presuppositions
of our technique, for the large aspects of the unconscious and of suppression
(resistance). In a subsequent lecture you will learn from what points
psychoanalysis proceeds organically. For the present I have not sought to hide
from you the fact that all our results are based on the study of a single group of
nervous affections, the so-called transference neuroses. Though you have
gained no positive knowledge and have not retained every detail, still I hope
that you have a fair picture of the methods, the problems and the results of
psychoanalysis.
I have assumed that it was your wish for me to begin my presentation of
neuroses with a description of nervous behavior, the nature of neurotic
suffering, and the way in which the nervous meet the conditions of their illness
and adapt themselves to these. Such subject matter is certainly interesting and
well worth knowing. It is moreover not very hard to handle, yet it is not wise to
begin with its consideration. There is danger of not discovering the
unconscious, of overlooking the great significance of the libido, of judging all
conditions as they appear to the ego of the nervous person. It is obvious that
this ego is neither a reliable nor an impartial authority. For this very ego is the
force that denies and suppresses the unconscious; when the unconscious is
concerned, how then could we expect justice to be done? The rejected claims of
sexuality stand first in the line of these suppressions; it is natural that from the
standpoint of the ego we can never learn their extent and significance. As soon
as we attain to the point of view of suppression, we are sufficiently warned not
to make one of the contending factions, above all not to make the victor judge
of the struggle. We are prepared to find that the testimony of the ego may lead
us astray. If one is to believe the evidence of the ego, it would appear to have
been active all along, all its symptoms would have been actively willed and
formed. Yet we know that it has passively allowed a great deal to occur, a fact
which it subsequently seeks to conceal and to palliate. To be sure, it does not
always attempt this; in the case of the symptoms of compulsion neurosis it must
admit that it is being opposed by something alien, which it can resist only with
difficulty.
Whoever does not heed these warnings not to mistake the prevarications of
the ego for truth, has clear sailing; he avoids all the resistances which oppose
the psychoanalytic emphasis upon the unconscious, on sexuality, and on the
passiveness of the ego. He will assert with Alfred Adler that the "nervous
character" is the cause instead of the result of the neurosis, but he will not be
able to explain a single detail of symptom formation or to interpret a single
dream.
You will ask: Is it not possible to do justice to the part the ego plays in
nervousness and in symptom formation without crudely neglecting the factors
revealed by psychoanalysis? I answer you: Surely it must be possible and at
some time or other it will take place; but the methods by which we organize the
work of psychoanalysis do not favor our beginning with just this task. We can
foresee the time when this task will claim the attention of psychoanalysis.
There are forms of neuroses, the so-called narcistic neuroses, in which the ego
is far more deeply involved than in anything we have studied heretofore. The
analytic investigation of these conditions will enable us to judge reliably and
impartially the part that the ego plays in neurotic illness.
One of the relations which the ego bears to its neurosis is so obvious that it
must be considered at the very outset. In no case does it seem to be absent, and
it is most clearly recognizable in the traumatic neuroses, conditions which we
do not as yet clearly understand. You must know that in the causation and
mechanisms of all possible forms of neurosis, the same factors are active again
and again; it is only the emphasis that is shifted from one to the other of these
factors in symptom formation. The members of a company of actors each have
certain parts to play—hero, villain, confidant, etc.—yet each will select a
different drama for his benefit. Thus the phantasies which undergo conversion
into symptoms are especially easy to detect in hysteria; compulsion neuroses
are essentially dominated by the reactionary formations, or counter-seizures of
the ego; what we designate as secondary elaboration in dreams dominates
paranoia in the form of delusions, etc.
In traumatic neuroses, particularly if they are caused by the horrors of war,
we are especially impressed by a selfish ego-impulse which seeks protection
and personal advantage. This in itself is not a sufficient cause for illness, but it
can favor its beginning and also feed its needs once it has been established.
This motive serves to protect the ego from the dangers whose imminence
precipitated the disease, and does not permit convalescence until the recurrence
of these dangers seems impossible, or until compensation has been obtained for
the danger that has been undergone.
But the ego betrays similar interest in the origin and maintenance of all other
neuroses. We have already said that the ego suffers the symptom to exist,
because one of its phases gratifies the egoistic tendency toward suppression.
Besides, the ending of the conflict by means of symptom development is
the path of least resistance, and a most convenient solution for the principle of
pleasure. Through symptom formation the ego is undoubtedly spared a severe
and unpleasant inner task. There are cases where even the physician must admit
that the resolution of the conflict into neurosis is the most harmless outcome
and one most easily tolerated by society. Do not be surprised, then, to learn that
occasionally even the physician takes the part of the illness he is battling
against. He does not have to restrict himself to the role of the fanatic warrior for
health in all situations of life. He knows that the world contains not only
neurotic misery, but also real, incurable suffering. He knows that necessity may
even require a human being to sacrifice his health, and he learns that by this
sacrifice on the part of one individual untold wretchedness may be spared for
many others. So if we say that the neurotic escapes the conflict by taking refuge
in illness, we must admit that in some cases this escape is justifiable, and the
physician who has diagnosed the state of affairs will retire silently and
tactfully.
But let us not consider these special cases in our further discussion. In
average cases the ego, by having recourse to neurosis, obtains a certain
inner advantage from the disease. Under certain conditions of life, there may
also be derived a tangible external advantage, more or less valuable in reality.
Let me direct your attention to the most frequent occurrences of this sort.
Women who are brutally treated and mercilessly exploited by their husbands
almost always adopt the evasion of the neurosis, provided that their
predisposition permits this. This usually follows when the woman is too
cowardly or too virtuous to seek secret solace in the arms of another, or when
she dare not separate from her husband in the face of all opposition, when she
has no prospect of maintaining herself or of finding a better husband and
especially when her sexual emotions still bind her to this brutal man. Her
illness becomes a weapon in her struggle with him, one that she can use for
self-protection and misuse for purposes of vengeance. She probably dare not
complain of her marriage, but she can complain of her illness. The doctor
becomes her assistant. She forces her inconsiderate husband to spare her, to
attend to her wishes, to permit her absence from the house and thus free her
from the oppressions of her married life. Wherever such external or accidental
gain through illness is considerable and can find no substitute in fact, you can
prophesy that the possibility of influencing neurosis through therapy is very
slight.
You will tell me that what I have said about the advantage gained from the
disease speaks entirely for the hypothesis I have rejected, namely, that the ego
itself wills and creates the neurosis. Just a moment! It probably does not mean
more than that the ego passively suffers the neurosis to exist, which it is unable
to prevent anyway. It makes the most of the neurosis, if anything can be made
of it at all. This is only one side of the question, the advantageous side. The ego
is willing to endure the advantages of the neurosis, but there are not only
advantages. As a rule it soon appears that the ego has made a poor deal in
accepting the neurosis. It has paid too high a price for the mitigation of the
conflict; and the sensations of suffering which the symptoms bring with them
are perhaps every bit as bad as the agonies of conflict, usually they cause even
greater discomfort. The ego wants to rid itself of the pain of the symptoms
without relinquishing the gain of illness, and that is impossible. Thus the ego is
discovered as by no means so active as it had thought itself to be, and this we
want to keep in mind.
If you were to come into contact with neurotics as a physician, you would
soon cease to expect that those who complain most woefully of their illness are
the ones who will oppose its therapy with the least resistance or who will
welcome any help. On the contrary, you would readily understand that
everything contributing to the advantage derived from the disease will
strengthen the resistance to the suppression and heighten the difficulty of the
therapy. We must also add another and later advantage to the gain of illness
which is born with the symptom. If a psychic organization, such as this illness,
has persisted for a long time, it finally behaves as an independent unit, it
expresses something like self-preservation, attains a kind of modus
vivendi between itself and other parts of psychic life, even those that are
fundamentally hostile to it. And occasions will probably arise where it can
prove again to be both useful and valuable, by which it will attain a secondary
function, which gives strength to its existence. Instead of an illustration from
pathology take a striking example from everyday life. An efficient workman
who earns his living is crippled for his occupation by some disaster; his work is
over for him. After a while, however, he receives a small accident insurance,
and learns to exploit his injury by begging. His new existence, though most
undesirable, is based upon the very thing that robbed him of his former
maintenance. If you could cure his defect, he would be without a means of
subsistence, he would have no livelihood. The question would arise: Is he
capable of resuming his former work? That which corresponds to such
secondary exploitation of illness in neurosis we may add to the primary benefit
derived therefrom and may term it a secondary advantage of disease.
In general I should like to warn you not to underestimate the practical
significance of the advantage from illness and yet not to be too much impressed
by it theoretically. Aside from the previously recognized exceptions, I am
always reminded of Oberländer's pictures on "the intelligence of animals"
which appeared in the Fliegende Blätter. An Arab is riding a camel on a narrow
path cut through a steep mountain side. At a turn of the trail he is suddenly
confronted by a lion who makes ready to spring. He sees no way out, on one
side the precipice, on the other the abyss; retreat and flight—both are
impossible; he gives himself up as lost. Not so the camel. He leaps into the
abyss with his rider—and the lion is left in the lurch. The help of neurosis is as
a rule no kinder to the rider. It may be due to the fact that the settlement of the
conflict through symptom development is nevertheless an automatic process,
not able to meet the demands of life, and for whose sake man renounces the use
of his best and loftiest powers. If it were possible to choose, it were indeed best
to perish in an honorable struggle with destiny.
I still owe you further explanation as to why, in my presentation of the theory
of neurosis, I did not proceed from ordinary nervousness as a starting point.
You may assume that, had I done this, the proof of the sexual origin of neurosis
would have been more difficult for me, and so I refrained. There you are
mistaken. In transference neurosis we must work at interpretations of the
symptoms to arrive at this conclusion. In the ordinary forms of the so-called
true neuroses, however, the etiological significance of sexual life is a crude fact
open to observation. I discovered it twenty years ago when I asked myself one
day why we regularly barred out questions concerning sexual activity in
examining nervous patients. At that time I sacrificed my popularity among my
patients to my investigations, yet after a brief effort I could state that no
neurosis, no true neurosis at least, is present with a normal sexual life. Of
course, this statement passes too lightly over the individual differences, it is
unclear through the vagueness with which it uses the term "normal," but even
to-day it retains its value for purposes of rough orientation. At that time I
reached the point of drawing comparisons between certain forms of
nervousness and sexual abnormalities, and I do not doubt that I could repeat the
same observations now, if similar material were at my disposal. I frequently
noticed that a man who contented himself with incomplete sexual gratification,
with manual ononism, for instance, would suffer from a true neurosis, and that
this neurosis would promptly give way to another form, if another sexual
regime no less harmful were substituted. From the change in the condition of
the patient I was able to guess the change in the mode of his sexual life. At that
time I learned to hold obstinately to my conjectures until I had overcome the
patient's prevarications and had forced him to confirm my suppositions. To be
sure, then he preferred to consult other physicians who did not inquire so
insistently into his sexual life.
At that time it did not escape my notice that the origin of the disease could
not always be traced back to sexual life; sexual abnormality would cause the
illness in one person, while another would fall ill because he had lost his
fortune or had suffered an exhausting organic disease. We gained insight into
this variation by means of the interrelations between the ego and the libido, and
the more profound our insight became, the more satisfactory were the results. A
person begins to suffer from neurosis when his ego has lost the capacity of
accommodating the libido. The stronger the ego, the easier the solution of the
problem; a weakening of the ego from any cause whatsoever has the same
effect as a superlative increase of the claims of the libido. There are other and
more intimate relations between the ego and the libido which I shall not
discuss, as we are not concerned with them here. To us it is of enlightening
significance that in every case, regardless of the way in which the illness was
caused, the symptoms of neurosis were opposed by the libido and thus gave
evidence for its abnormal use.
Now, however, I want to draw your attention to the difference between the
symptoms of the true neuroses and the psychoneuroses, the first group of
which, the transference neurosis, has occupied us considerably. In both cases
the symptoms proceed from the libido. They are accordingly abnormal uses of
it, substitutes for gratification. But the symptoms of the true neurosis—such as
pressure in the head, sensations of pain, irritability of an organ, weakening or
inhibition of a function—these have no meaning, no psychic significance. They
are manifested not only in the body, as for instance hysteric symptoms, but are
in themselves physical processes whose creation is devoid of all the
complicated psychic mechanism with which we have become acquainted. They
really embody the character that has so long been attributed to the
psychoneurotic symptom. But how can they then correspond to uses of the
libido, which we have come to know as a psychological force? That is quite
simple. Let me recall one of the very first objections that was made to
psychoanalysis. It was stated that psychoanalysis was concerned with a purely
psychological theory of neurotic manifestations; that this was a hopeless
outlook since psychological theories could never explain illness. The objectors
chose to forget that the sexual function is neither purely psychic nor merely
somatic. It influences physical as well as psychic life. In the symptoms of the
psychoneuroses we have recognized the expression of a disturbance in psychic
processes. And so we shall not be surprised to discover that the true neuroses
are the direct somatic consequences of sexual disturbances.
The medical clinic gives us a valuable suggestion (observed by many
research workers) for the comprehension of the true neuroses. In all the details
of their symptomatology, and as well in their characteristic power to influence
all organic systems and all functions, the true neuroses reveal a marked
similarity to the conditions of those diseases which originate through the
chronic influence of foreign poisons and as well through their acute diminution;
with conditions prevalent in intoxication and abstinence. The two groups of
conditions are brought still closer together by the relation of intermediate
conditions, which, following M. Basedowi, we have learned to attribute to the
influence of toxic substances, but of toxins, however, which are not introduced
into the body from without, but arise in its own metabolism. These analogies, I
think, lead us directly to the consideration of these neuroses as disturbances in
sexual metabolism. It may be that more sexual toxins are produced than the
individual can dispose of, or that inner, even psychic conditions, stand in the
way of the proper elaboration of these substances. The language of the people
has always favored such assumptions as to the nature of sexual desires. It calls
love an "intoxication"; it will have love-madness aroused through potions, and
thus sees the motive force removed, as it were, to the outer world. For the rest,
the phrase "sexual metabolism" or "chemism of sexuality" is a chapter-head
without content. We know nothing about it and cannot even decide whether we
are to assume two sexual substances, the male and the female, or, if there is
only one sexual toxin, which to consider the carrier of all the stimulating power
of the libido. The structure of psychoanalysis that we have erected is really only
a superstructure which at some future time must be placed upon its organic
foundation; but what this is we do not know as yet.
Psychoanalysis is characterized as a science, not by reason of the subject
matter it handles but by the technique it employs. This can be employed in
dealing with the history of civilization, the science of religion or mythology, as
well as with the theory of neurosis, without altering its character. The revealing
of the unconscious in psychic life is all it aims to accomplish. The problems of
the true neuroses, whose symptoms probably originate in direct toxic damage,
yield no point of attack to psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis can do little for their
elucidation, and must leave the task to biological-medical research. Perhaps
you understand now why I did not choose to organize my material differently.
If I had given to you an Introduction to the Theory of the Neuroses as you
wished, it would unquestionably have been correct to proceed from the simple
forms of the true neuroses to those complex illnesses caused by a disturbance
of the libido. In discussing the true neuroses I would have had to bring together
the facts we have gleaned from various quarters and present what we think we
know of them. Only later, under the psychoneuroses, would psychoanalysis
have been discussed as the most important technical aid for insight into these
conditions. I had, however, intended and announced A General Introduction to
Psychoanalysis, and it seemed to me more important to give you an idea of
psychoanalysis than to present certain positive facts about neuroses; and so I
could not place the true neuroses into the foreground, for they prove sterile for
the purposes of psychoanalysis. I believe that I have made the wiser choice for
you, since psychoanalysis deserves the interest of every educated person
because of its profound hypotheses and far-reaching connections. The theory of
neurosis, on the other hand, is a chapter of medicine like any other.
You are, however, justified in expecting some interest on our part in the true
neuroses. Because of their intimate connection with psychoneuroses we find
this decidedly necessary. I shall tell you then that we distinguish three pure
forms of true neuroses: neurasthenia, anxiety neurosis and hypochondria. Even
this classification has not remained uncontradicted. The terms are all widely
used, but their connotation is vague and uncertain. Besides, there are in this
world of confusion physicians who object to any distinctions between
manifestations, any emphasis of clinical detail, who do not even recognize the
separation of true neuroses and psychoneuroses. I think they have gone too far
and have not chosen the road which leads to progress. The types of neuroses we
have mentioned occur occasionally in pure form; more often they are blended
with one another or with a psychoneurotic condition. This need not discourage
us to the extent of abandoning the task of distinction. Think of the difference
between the study of minerals and that of ores in mineralogy. Minerals are
described as individuals; frequently of course they occur as crystals, separated
sharply from their surroundings. Ores consist of an aggregate of minerals which
have coalesced not accidentally, but as a result of the conditions of their origin.
We understand too little of the process of development of neuroses, to create
anything similar to the study of ores. But we are surely working in the right
direction when we isolate the known clinical factors, comparable to the
separate minerals, from the great mass.
A noteworthy connection between the symptoms of the true neuroses and the
psychoneuroses adds a valuable contribution to our knowledge of symptom
formation in the latter. The symptom in the true neuroses is frequently the
nucleus and incipient stage of development of the psychoneurotic symptom.
Such a connection is most easily observed between neurasthenia and the
transference neuroses, which are termed conversion hysteria, between anxiety
neurosis and anxiety hysteria, but also between hypochondria and paraphrenia
(dementia praecox and paranoia), forms of neuroses of which we shall speak
subsequently. Let us take as an illustration the hysteric headache or backache.
Analysis shows that through elaboration and displacement this pain has become
the gratification substitute for a whole series of libidinous phantasies or
reminiscences. But once upon a time this pain was real, a direct sexual toxic
symptom, the physical expression of libidinous excitation. We do not wish to
assert, by any means, that all hysteric symptoms can be traced to such a
nucleus, but it is true that this is frequently the case, and that all influences
upon the body through libidinous excitation, whether normal or pathological,
are especially significant for the symptom development in hysteria. They play
the part of the grain of sand which the mollusc has enveloped in mother-of-
pearl. In the same way passing signs of sexual excitation, which accompany the
sexual act, are used by psychoneurosis as the most convenient and appropriate
material for symptom formation.
A similar procedure is of diagnostic and therapeutic interest especially.
Persons who are disposed to be neurotic, without suffering from a flourishing
neurosis, frequently set in motion the work of symptom development as the
result of an abnormal physical change—often an inflammation or an injury.
This development rapidly makes the symptom given by reality the
representative of the unconscious phantasies that had been lurking for an
opportunity to seize upon a means of expression. In such a case the physician
will try different ways of therapy. Either he will try to do away with the organic
basis without bothering about its noisy neurotic elaboration, or he will struggle
with the neurosis brought out by the occasion, and ignore its organic cause. The
result will justify now one, now the other method of procedure; no general laws
can be laid down for such mixed cases.

TWENTY-FIFTH LECTURE

GENERAL THEORY OF THE NEUROSES

Fear and Anxiety

PROBABLY you will term what I told you about ordinary nervousness in
my last lecture most fragmentary and unsatisfactory information. I know this,
and I think you were probably most surprised that I did not mention fear, which
most nervous people complain of and describe as their greatest source of
suffering. It can attain a terrible intensity which may result in the wildest
enterprises. But I do not wish to fall short of your expectations in this matter. I
intend, on the contrary, to treat the problem of the fear of nervous people with
great accuracy and to discuss it with you at some length.
Fear itself needs no introduction; everyone has at some time or other known
this sensation or, more precisely, this effect. It seems to me that we never
seriously inquired why the nervous suffered so much more and so much more
intensely under this condition. Perhaps it was thought a matter of course; it is
usual to confuse the words "nervous" and "anxious" as though they meant the
same thing. That is unjustifiable; there are anxious people who are not nervous,
and nervous people who suffer from many symptoms, but not from the
tendency to anxiety.
However that may be, it is certain that the problem of fear is the meeting
point of many important questions, an enigma whose complete solution would
cast a flood of light upon psychic life. I do not claim that I can furnish you with
this complete solution, but you will certainly expect psychoanalysis to deal
with this theme in a manner different from that of the schools of medicine.
These schools seem to be interested primarily in the anatomical cause of the
condition of fear. They say the medulla oblongata is irritated, and the patient
learns that he is suffering from neurosis of the nervus vague. The medulla
oblongata is a very serious and beautiful object. I remember exactly how much
time and trouble I devoted to the study of it, years ago. But today I must say
that I know of nothing more indifferent to me for the psychological
comprehension of fear, than knowledge of the nerve passage through which
these sensations must pass.
One can talk about fear for a long time without even touching upon
nervousness. You will understand me without more ado, when I term this
fear real fear in contrast toneurotic fear. Real fear seems quite rational and
comprehensible to us. We may testify that it is a reaction to the perception of
external danger, viz., harm that is expected and foreseen. It is related to the
flight reflex and may be regarded as an expression of the instinct of self-
preservation. And so the occasions, viz., the objects and situations which
arouse fear, will depend largely on our knowledge of and our feeling of power
over the outer world. We deem it quite a matter of course that the savage fears
a cannon or an eclipse of the sun, while the white man, who can handle the
instrument and prophesy the phenomenon, does not fear these things. At other
times superior knowledge promulgates fear, because it recognizes the danger
earlier. The savage, for instance, will recoil before a footprint in the woods,
meaningless to the uninstructed, which reveals to him the proximity of an
animal of prey; the experienced sailor will notice a little cloud, which tells him
of a coming hurricane, with terror, while to the passenger it seems insignificant.
After further consideration, we must say to ourselves that the verdict on real
fear, whether it be rational or purposeful, must be thoroughly revised. For the
only purposeful behavior in the face of imminent danger would be the cool
appraisal of one's own strength in comparison with the extent of the threatening
danger, and then decide which would presage a happier ending: flight, defense,
or possibly even attack. Under such a proceeding fear has absolutely no place;
everything that happens would be consummated just as well and better without
the development of fear. You know that if fear is too strong, it proves
absolutely useless and paralyzes every action, even flight. Generally the
reaction against danger consists in a mixture of fear and resistance. The
frightened animal is afraid and flees. But the purposeful factor in such a case is
not fear but flight.
We are therefore tempted to claim that the development of fear is never
purposeful. Perhaps closer examination will give us greater insight into the fear
situation. The first factor is the expectancy of danger which expresses itself in
heightened sensory attention and in motor tension. This expectancy is
undoubtedly advantageous; its absence may be responsible for serious
consequences. On the one hand, it gives rise to motor activity, primarily to
flight, and on a higher plane to active defense; on the other hand, it gives rise to
something which we consider the condition of fear. In so far as the
development is still incipient, and is restricted to a mere signal, the more
undisturbed the conversion of the readiness to be afraid into action the more
purposeful the entire proceeding. The readiness to be afraid seems to be the
purposeful aspect; evolution of fear itself, the element that defeats its own
object.
I avoid entering upon a discussion as to whether our language means the
same or distinct things by the words anxiety, fear or fright. I think that anxiety
is used in connection with a condition regardless of any objective, while fear is
essentially directed toward an object. Fright, on the other hand, seems really to
possess a special meaning, which emphasizes the effects of a danger which is
precipitated without any expectance or readiness of fear. Thus we might say
that anxiety protects man from fright.
You have probably noticed the ambiguity and vagueness in the use of the
word "anxiety." Generally one means a subjective condition, caused by the
perception that an "evolution of fear" has been consummated. Such a condition
may be called an emotion. What is an emotion in the dynamic sense? Certainly
something very complex. An emotion, in the first place, includes indefinite
motor innervations or discharges; secondly, definite sensations which moreover
are of two kinds, the perception of motor activities that have already taken
place, and the direct sensations of pleasure and pain, which give the effect of
what we call its feeling tone. But I do not think that the true nature of the
emotion has been fathomed by these enumerations. We have gained deeper
insight into some emotions and realize that the thread which binds together
such a complex as we have described is the repetition of a certain significant
experience. This experience might be an early impression of a very general
sort, which belongs to the antecedent history of the species rather than to that of
the individual. To be more clear: the emotional condition has a structure similar
to that of an hysterical attack; it is the upshot of a reminiscence. The hysteric
attack, then, is comparable to a newly formed individual emotion, the normal
emotion to an hysteria which has become a universal heritage.
Do not assume that what I have said here about emotions is derived from
normal psychology. On the contrary, these are conceptions that have grown up
with and are at home only in psychoanalysis. What psychology has to say about
emotions—the James-Lange theory, for instance—is absolutely
incomprehensible for us psychoanalysts, and cannot be discussed. Of course,
we do not consider our knowledge about emotions very certain; it is a
preliminary attempt to become oriented in this obscure region. To continue: We
believe we know the early impression which the emotion of fear repeats. We
think it is birth itself which combines that complex of painful feelings, of a
discharge of impulses, of physical sensations, which has become the prototype
for the effect of danger to life, and is ever after repeated within us as a
condition of fear. The tremendous heightening of irritability through the
interruption of the circulation (internal respiration) was at the time the cause of
the experience of fear; the first fear was therefore toxic. The name anxiety—
angustial—narrowness, emphasizes the characteristic tightening of the breath,
which was at the time a consequence of an actual situation and is henceforth
repeated almost regularly in the emotion. We shall also recognize how
significant it is that this first condition of fear appeared during the separation
from the mother. Of course, we are convinced that the tendency to repetition of
the first condition of fear has been so deeply ingrained in the organism through
countless generations, that not a single individual can escape the emotion of
fear; not even the mythical Macduff who was "cut out of his mother's womb,"
and therefore did not experience birth itself. We do not know the prototype of
the condition of fear in the case of other mammals, and so we do not know the
complex of emotions that in them is the equivalent of our fear.
Perhaps it will interest you to hear how the idea that birth is the source and
prototype of the emotion of fear, happened to occur to me. Speculation plays
the smallest part in it; I borrowed it from the native train of thought of the
people. Many years ago we were sitting around the dinner table—a number of
young physicians—when an assistant in the obstetrical clinic told a jolly story
of what had happened in the last examination for midwives. A candidate was
asked what it implied if during delivery the foeces of the newborn was present
in the discharge of waters, and she answered promptly "the child is afraid." She
was laughed at and "flunked." But I silently took her part and began to suspect
that the poor woman of the people had, with sound perception, revealed an
important connection.
Proceeding now to neurotic fear, what are its manifestations and conditions?
There is much to be described. In the first place we find a general condition of
anxiety, a condition of free-floating fear as it were, which is ready to attach
itself to any appropriate idea, to influence judgment, to give rise to
expectations, in fact to seize any opportunity to make itself felt. We call this
condition "expectant fear" or "anxious expectation." Persons who suffer from
this sort of fear always prophesy the most terrible of all possibilities, interpret
every coincidence as an evil omen, and ascribe a dreadful meaning to all
uncertainty. Many persons who cannot be termed ill show this tendency to
anticipate disaster. We blame them for being over-anxious or pessimistic. A
striking amount of expectant fear is characteristic of a nervous condition which
I have named "anxiety neurosis," and which I group with the true neuroses.
A second form of fear in contrast to the one we have just described is
psychologically more circumscribed and bound up with certain objects or
situations. It is the fear of the manifold and frequently very peculiar phobias.
Stanley Hall, the distinguished American psychologist, has recently taken the
trouble to present a whole series of these phobias in gorgeous Greek
terminology. They sound like the enumeration of the ten Egyptian plagues,
except that their number exceeds ten, by far. Just listen to all the things which
may become the objects of contents of a phobia: Darkness, open air, open
squares, cats, spiders, caterpillars, snakes, mice, thunder-storms, sharp points,
blood, enclosed spaces, crowds, solitude, passing over a bridge, travel on land
and sea, etc. A first attempt at orientation in this chaos leads readily to a
division into three groups. Some of the fearful objects and situations have
something gruesome for normal people too, a relation to danger, and so, though
they are exaggerated in intensity, they do not seem incomprehensible to us.
Most of us, for instance, experience a feeling of repulsion in the presence of a
snake. One may say that snakephobia is common to all human beings, and
Charles Darwin has described most impressively how he was unable to control
his fear of a snake pointing for him, though he knew he was separated from it
by a thick pane of glass. The second group consists of cases which still bear a
relation to danger, but this is of a kind which we are disposed to belittle rather
than to overestimate. Most of the situation-phobia belong here. We know that
by taking a railroad journey we entail greater chance of disaster than by staying
at home. A collision, for instance, may occur, or a ship sink, when as a rule we
must drown; yet we do not think of these dangers, and free from fear we travel
on train and boat. We cannot deny that if a bridge should collapse at the
moment we are crossing it, we would fall into the river, but that is such a rare
occurrence that we do not take the danger into account. Solitude too has its
dangers and we avoid it under certain conditions; but it is by no means a matter
of being unable to suffer it for a single moment. The same is true for the crowd,
the enclosed space, the thunder-storm, etc. It is not at all the content but the
intensity of these neurotic phobias that appears strange to us. The fear of the
phobia cannot even be described. Sometimes we almost receive the impression
that the neurotic is not really afraid of the same things and situations that can
arouse fear in us, and which he calls by the same name.
There remains a third group of phobias which is entirely unintelligible to us.
When a strong, adult man is afraid to cross a street or a square of his own home
town, when a healthy, well-developed woman becomes almost senseless with
fear because a cat has brushed the hem of her dress or a mouse has scurried
through the room—how are we to establish the relation to danger that
obviously exists under the phobia? In these animal phobias it cannot possibly
be a question of the heightening of common human antipathies. For, as an
illustration of the antithesis, there are numerous persons who cannot pass a cat
without calling and petting it. The mouse of which women are so much afraid,
is at the same time a first class pet name. Many a girl who has been gratified to
have her lover call her so, screams when she sees the cunning little creature
itself. The behavior of the man who is afraid to cross the street or the square
can only be explained by saying that he acts like a little child. A child is really
taught to avoid a situation of this sort as dangerous, and our agoraphobist is
actually relieved of his fear if some one goes with him across the square or
street.
The two forms of fear that have been described, free-floating fear and the
fear which is bound up with phobias, are independent of one another. The one
is by no means a higher development of the other; only in exceptional cases,
almost by accident, do they occur simultaneously. The strongest condition of
general anxiety need not manifest itself in phobias; and persons whose entire
life is hemmed in by agoraphobia can be entirely free of pessimistic expectant
fear. Some phobias, such as the fear of squares or of trains, are acquired only in
later life, while others, the fear of darkness, storms and animals, exist from the
very beginning. The former signify serious illness, the latter appear rather as
peculiarities, moods. Yet whoever is burdened with fear of this second kind
may be expected to harbor other and similar phobias. I must add that we group
all these phobias under anxiety hysteria, and therefore regard it as a condition
closely related to the well-known conversion hysteria.
The third form of neurotic fear confronts us with an enigma; we loose sight
entirely of the connection between fear and threatening danger. This anxiety
occurs in hysteria, for instance, as the accompaniment of hysteric symptoms, or
under certain conditions of excitement, where we would expect an emotional
manifestation, but least of all of fear, or without reference to any known
circumstance, unintelligible to us and to the patient. Neither far nor near can we
discover a danger or a cause which might have been exaggerated to such
significance. Through these spontaneous attacks we learn that the complex
which we call the condition of anxiety can be resolved into its components. The
whole attack may be represented by a single intensively developed symptom,
such as a trembling, dizziness, palpitation of the heart, or tightening of breath;
the general undertone by which we usually recognize fear may be utterly
lacking or vague. And yet these conditions, which we describe as "anxiety
equivalents," are comparable to anxiety in all its clinical and etiological
relations.
Two questions arise. Can we relate neurotic fear, in which danger plays so
small a part or none at all, to real fear, which is always a reaction to danger?
And what can we understand as the basis of neurotic fear? For the present we
want to hold to our expectations: "Wherever there is fear, there must be a cause
for it."
Clinical observation yields several suggestions for the comprehension of
neurotic fear, the significance of which I shall discuss with you.
 1. It is not difficult to determine that expectant fear or general anxiety is
closely connected with certain processes in sexual life, let us say with certain
types of libido. Utilization, the simplest and most instructive case of this kind,
results when persons expose themselves to frustrated excitation, viz., if their
sexual excitation does not meet with sufficient relief and is not brought to a
satisfactory conclusion, in men, during the time of their engagement to marry,
for instance, or in women whose husbands are not sufficiently potent or who,
from caution, execute the sexual act in a shortened or mutilated form. Under
these circumstances libidinous excitement disappears and anxiety takes its
place, both in the form of expectant fear and in attacks and anxiety equivalents.
The cautious interruption of the sexual act, when practiced as the customary
sexual regime, so frequently causes the anxiety neurosis in men, and especially
in women, that physicians are wise in such cases to examine primarily this
etiology. On innumerable occasions we have learned that anxiety neurosis
vanishes when the sexual misuse is abandoned.
So far as I know, the connection between sexual restraint and conditions of
anxiety is no longer questioned even by physicians who have nothing to do
with psychoanalysis. But I can well imagine that they do not desist from
reversing the connection and saying that these persons have exhibited a
tendency to anxiety from the outset and therefore practice reserve in sexual
matters. The behavior of women whose sexual conduct is passive, viz., is
determined by the treatment of the husband, contradicts this supposition. The
more temperamental, that is, the more disposed toward sexual intercourse and
capable of gratification is the woman, the more will she react to the impotence
of the man, or to the coitus interruptus, by anxiety manifestations. In
anaesthetic or only slightly libidinous women, such misuse will not carry such
consequences.
Sexual abstinence, recommended so warmly by the physicians of to-day, has
the same significance in the development of conditions of anxiety only when
the libido, to which satisfactory relief is denied, is sufficiently strong and not
for the most part accounted for by sublimation. The decision whether illness is
to result always depends upon the quantitative factors. Even where character
formation and not disease is concerned, we easily recognize that sexual
constraint goes hand in hand with a certain anxiety, a certain caution, while
fearlessness and bold daring arise from free gratification of sexual desires.
However much these relations are altered by various influences of civilization,
for the average human being it is true that anxiety and sexual constraint belong
together.
I have by no means mentioned all the observations that speak for the genetic
relation of the libido to fear. The influence on the development of neurotic fear
of certain phases of life, such as puberty and the period of menopause, when
the production of libido is materially heightened, belongs here too. In some
conditions of excitement we may observe the mixture of anxiety and libido and
the final substitution of anxiety for libido. These facts give us a twofold
impression, first that we are concerned with an accumulation of libido, which is
diverted from its normal channel, second that we are working with somatic
processes. Just how anxiety originates from the libido we do not know; we can
only ascertain that the libido is in abeyance, and that we observe anxiety in its
place.
2. We glean a second hint from the analysis of the psychoneuroses,
especially of hysteria. We have heard that in addition to the symptoms, fear
frequently accompanies this condition; this, however, is free floating fear,
which is manifested either as an attack or becomes a permanent condition. The
patients cannot tell what they are afraid of and connect their fear, through an
unmistakable secondary elaboration, with phobias nearest at hand; death,
insanity, paralysis. When we analyze the situation which gave rise to the
anxiety or to symptoms accompanied by it, we can generally tell which normal
psychologic process has been omitted and has been replaced by the
phenomenon of fear. Let me express it differently: we reconstruct the
unconscious process as though it had not experienced suppression and had
continued its way into consciousness uninterruptedly. Under these conditions as
well this process would have been accompanied by an emotion, and we now
learn with surprise that when suppression has occurred the emotion
accompanying the normal process has been replaced by fear, regardless of its
original quality. In hysteric conditions of fear, its unconscious correlative may
be either an impulse of similar character, such as fear, shame, embarrassment
or positive libidinous excitation, or hostile and aggressive emotion such as fury
or rage. Fear then is the common currency for which all emotional impulses can
be exchanged, provided that the idea with which it has been associated has been
subject to suppression.
3. Patients suffering from compulsive acts are remarkably devoid of fear.
They yield us the data for our third point. If we try to hinder them in the
performance of their compulsive acts, of their washing or their ceremonials, or
if they themselves dare to give up one of their compulsions, they are seized
with terrible fear that again exacts obedience to the compulsion. We understand
that the compulsive act had veiled fear and had been performed only to avoid it.
In compulsion neurosis then, fear, which would otherwise be present, is
replaced by symptom development. Similar results are yielded by hysteria.
Following the process of suppression we find the development, either of
anxiety alone or of anxiety and symptom development, or finally a more
complete symptom development and no anxiety. In an abstract sense, then, it
would be correct to say that symptoms are formed only to evade development
of fear, which otherwise could not be escaped. According to this conception,
fear is seen to occupy the center of the stage in the problems of neurosis.
Our observations on anxiety neuroses led to the conclusion that when the
libido was diverted from its normal use and anxiety thus released, it occurred
on the basis of somatic processes. The analyses of hysteria and compulsion
neuroses furnish the correlative observations that similar diversion with similar
results may also be the consequence of a constraint of psychic forces. Such then
is our knowledge of the origin of neurotic fear; it still sounds rather vague. But
as yet I know no path that would lead us further. The second task we have set
ourselves is still more difficult to accomplish. It is the establishment of a
connection between neurotic fear, which is misused libido, and real fear, which
is a reaction to danger. You may believe that these things are quite distinct and
yet we have no criterion for distinguishing the sensations of real and neurotic
fear.
The desired connection is brought about by presupposing the antithesis of the
ego to libido that is so frequently claimed. We know that the development of
fear is the ego's reaction to danger, the signal for preparation for flight, and
from this we are led to believe that in neurotic fear the ego attempts to escape
the claims of its libido, and treats this inner danger as though it came from
without. Accordingly our expectation that where there is fear there must be
something to be afraid of, is fulfilled. But the analogy admits of further
application. Just as the attempt to flee external danger is relieved by standing
one's ground, and by appropriate steps toward defense, so the development of
neurotic fear is arrested as fast as the symptom develops, for by means of it the
fear is held in check.
Our difficulties in understanding now lie elsewhere. The fear, which
represents flight of the ego before the libido, is supposed to have sprung from
the libido itself. That is obscure and warns us not to forget that the libido of a
person belongs fundamentally to him and cannot confront him as an external
force. The localized dynamics of fear development are still unintelligible; we
do not know what psychic energies are released or from what psychic systems
they are derived. I cannot promise to solve this problem, but we still have two
trails to follow which lead us to direct observations and analytic investigation
which can aid our speculations. We turn to the origin of fear in the child, and to
the source of neurotic fear which attaches itself to phobias.
Fear in children is quite common and it is very hard to tell whether it is
neurotic or real fear. Indeed, the value of this distinction is rendered
questionable by the behavior of children. On the one hand we are not surprised
that the child fears all strange persons, new situations and objects, and we
explain this reaction very easily by his weakness and ignorance. We ascribe to
the child a strong disposition to real fear and would consider it purposeful if
this fear were in fact a heritage. Herein the child would only repeat the
behavior of prehistoric man and of the primitive man of today who, on account
of his ignorance and helplessness, fears everything that is new, and much that is
familiar, all of which can no longer inspire us with fear. If the phobias of the
child were at least partially such as might be attributed to that primeval period
of human development, this would tally entirely with our expectations.
On the other hand, we cannot overlook the fact that not all children are
equally afraid, and that those very children who express particular timidity
toward all possible objects and situations subsequently prove to be nervous.
Thus the neurotic disposition reveals itself by a decided tendency to real fear;
anxiety rather than nervousness appears to be primary. We therefore arrive at
the conclusion that the child (and later the adult) fears the power of his libido
because he is anxious in the face of everything. The derivation of anxiety from
the libido is hence put aside. Any investigation of the conditions of real fear
consistently leads to the conclusion that consciousness of one's own weakness
and helplessness—inferiority, in the terminology of A. Adler—when it is able
to persist from childhood to maturity, is the cause underlying the neuroses.
This sounds so simple and convincing that it has a claim upon our attention.
To be sure, it would result in our shifting the basis of nervousness. The
persistence of the feeling of inferiority, and its prerequisite condition of anxiety
and its subsequent development of symptoms, is so firmly established that it is
rather the exceptional case, when health is the outcome, which requires an
explanation. What can be learned from careful observation of the fear of
children? The little child is primarily afraid of strange people; situations wax
important only because they involve people, and objects become influential
much later. But the child does not fear these strange persons because he
attributes evil intentions to them, because he compares his weakness with their
strength or recognizes them as dangerous to his existence, his safety and
freedom from pain. Such a child, suspicious, afraid of the aggressive impulse
which dominates the world, would prove a sad theoretic construction. The child
is afraid of a stranger because he is adjusted to a dear, beloved person, his
mother. His disappointment and longing are transformed into fear, his
unemployed libido, which cannot yet be held suspended, is diverted by fear. It
cannot be termed a coincidence that this situation, which is a typical example of
all childish fear, is a repetition of the first condition of fear during birth, viz.,
separation from the mother.
The first situation phobias of children are darkness and solitude; the former
often persists throughout life; common to both is the absence of the dear nurse,
the mother. I once heard a child, who was afraid of the dark, call into an
adjoining room, "Auntie, talk to me, I am afraid." "But what good will that do
you? You cannot see me!" Whereupon the child answered, "If someone speaks,
it is brighter." The yearning felt in darkness is converted into the fear of
darkness. Far from saying that neurotic fear is only a secondary, a special case
of real fear, we observe in little children something that resembles the behavior
of real fear and has in common with neurotic fear, this characteristic feature:
origin from unemployed libido. The child seems to bring very little real fear
into the world. In all situations which may later become the conditions of
phobias, on elevations, narrow bridges across water, on railroad and boat trips,
the child exhibits no fear. And the more ignorant he is, the less fear he feels. It
would be most desirable to have a greater heritage of such life-preservative
instincts; the task of supervision, which is to hinder him from exposing himself
to one danger after another, would be lessened. In reality the child at first
overestimates his powers and behaves fearlessly because he does not recognize
dangers. He will run to the water's edge, mount the window sill, play with fire
or with sharp utensils, in short, he will do everything that would harm him and
alarm his guardians. The awakening of real fear is the result of education, since
we may not permit him to pass through the instructive experience himself.
If there are children who meet this education to fear half way, and who
discover dangers of which they have not been warned, the explanation suffices
that their constitution contains a greater measure of libidinous need or that they
have been spoiled early through libidinous gratification. No wonder that those
persons who are nervous in later life are recruited from the ranks of these
children. We know that the creation of neurosis is made easy by the inability to
endure a considerable amount of pent-up libido for any length of time. You see
that here too we must do justice to the constitutional factor, whose rights we
never wish to question. We fight shy of it only when others neglect all other
claims for this, and introduce the constitutional factor where it does not belong
according to the combined results of observation and analysis, or where it must
be the last consideration.
Let us extract the sum of our observations on the anxiety of children:
Infantile fear has very little to do with real fear, but is closely related to the
neurotic fear of adults. It originates in unemployed libido and replaces the
object of love that is lacking by an external object or situation.
Now you will be glad to hear that the analysis of phobias cannot teach much
more that is new. The same thing occurs in them as in the fear of children;
unemployed libido is constantly being converted into real fear and so a tiny
external danger takes the place of the demands of the libido. This coincidence
is not strange, for infantile phobias are not only the prototypes but the direct
prerequisite and prelude to later phobias, which are grouped with the anxiety
hysterias. Every hysteria phobia can be traced to childish fear of which it is a
continuation, even if it has another content and must therefore receive a
different name. The difference between the two conditions lies in their
mechanism. In the adult the fact that the libido has momentarily become
useless in the form of longing, is not sufficient to effect the transformation of
fear into libido. He has long since learned to maintain such libido in a
suspended state or to use it differently. But when the libido is part of a psychic
impulse which has experienced suppression, similar conditions to those of the
child, who cannot distinguish the conscious from the unconscious, are
reëstablished. The regression to infantile phobia is the bridge where the
transformation of libido into fear is conveniently effected. We have, as you
know, spoken a great deal about suppression, but we have always followed the
fate of the conception that was to be suppressed, because this was easier to
recognize and to present. We have always omitted from our consideration what
happened to the emotion that clung to the suppressed idea; and only now we
learn that whatever quality this emotion might have manifested under normal
conditions, its fate is a transformation into fear. This transformation of emotion
is by far the more important part of the suppression process. It is not so easy to
discuss, because we cannot assert the existence of unconscious emotions in the
same sense as unconscious ideas. With one difference, an idea remains the
same whether it is conscious or unconscious; we can give an account of what
corresponds to an unconscious idea. But an emotion is a release and must be
judged differently from an idea. Without a deeper reflection and clarification of
our hypotheses of psychic processes, we cannot tell what corresponds to its
unconscious stage. We cannot undertake this here. But we want to retain the
impression we have gained, that the development of anxiety is closely
connected with the unconscious system.
I said that the transformation into fear, rather a discharge in the form of fear,
is the immediate fate of suppressed libido. Not the only or final fate, I must
add. These neuroses are accompanied by processes that strive to restrain the
development of fear, and succeed in various ways. In phobias, for instance, two
phases of the neurotic process can be clearly distinguished. The first effects the
suppression of libido and its transition to fear, which is joined to an external
danger. The second consists in building up all those precautions and safety
devices which are to prevent contact with this danger which is dealt with as an
external fact. Suppression corresponds to the ego's flight from the libido, which
it regards dangerous. The phobia is comparable to a fortification against outer
danger, which is represented by the much feared libido. The weakness of the
phobias' system of defense lies in the fact that the fort has been strengthened
from without and has remained vulnerable within. The projection of peril from
the libido into the environment is never very successful. In other neuroses,
therefore, other systems of defense are used against the possibility of fear
development. That is an interesting aspect of the psychology of neurosis.
Unfortunately its study would lead us to digress too far, and presupposes a
more thorough and special knowledge of the subject. I shall add only one thing
more. I have already spoken to you of the counter siege by which the ego
imprisons the suppression and which it must maintain permanently for the
suppression to subsist. The task of this counter siege is to carry out diverse
forms of defense against the fear development which follows the suppression.
To return to the phobias, I may now say that you realize how insufficient it
would be to explain only their content, to be interested only in knowing that
this or that object or situation is made the subject of a phobia. The content of
the phobia has about the same importance for it as the manifest dream facade
has for the dream. With some necessary restrictions, we admit that among the
contents of the phobias are some that are especially qualified to be objects of
fear through phylogenetic inheritance, as Stanley Hall has emphasized. In
harmony with this is the fact that many of these objects of fear can establish
connections with danger only by symbolic relations.
And so we are convinced of the central position that the problem of fear
assumes in the questions of the neurotic psychology. We are deeply impressed
with how closely the development of fear is interwoven with the fate of the
libido and the unconscious system. There is only one disconnected point, one
inconsistency in our hypothesis: the indisputable fact that real fear must be
considered an expression of the ego's instincts of self-preservation.

TWENTY-SIXTH LECTURE

GENERAL THEORY OF THE NEUROSES

The Libido Theory and Narcism

REPEATEDLY in the past and more recently we have dealt with the
distinction between the ego instincts and the sexual instincts. At first,
suppression taught us that the two may be flatly opposed to each other, that in
the struggle the sexual instincts suffer apparent defeat and are forced to obtain
satisfaction by other regressive methods, and so find the compensation for
defeat in their invulnerability. After that we learned that at the outset both have
a different relation to the educator, Necessity, so that they do not develop in the
same manner and do not enter into the same relationship with the principle of
reality. We come to realize that the sexual instincts are much more closely
allied to the emotional condition of fear than the ego instincts. This result
appears incomplete only in one respect, which, however, is most important. For
further evidence we shall mention the significant fact that non-satisfaction of
hunger and thirst, the two most elementary instincts of self-preservation, never
result in their reversal into anxiety, while the transformation of unsatisfied
libido into fear is, as we have heard, one of the best known and most frequently
observed phenomena.
No one can contest our perfect justification in separating the ego from sexual
instincts. It is affirmed by the existence of sexual desire, which is a very special
activity of the individual. The only question is, what significance shall we give
to this distinction, how decisive is it? The answer will depend upon the results
of our observations; on how far the sexual instincts, in their psychological and
somatic manifestations, behave differently from the others that are opposed to
them; on how important are the consequences which result from these
differences. We have, of course, no motive whatever for insisting upon a
certain intangible difference in the character of the two groups of instincts.
Both are only designations of the sources of energy of the individual. The
discussion as to whether they are fundamentally of the same or of a different
character, and if the same, when it was that they separated from one another,
cannot profit by the conceptions, but must deal rather with the underlying
biological facts. At present we know very little about this, and even if we knew
more it would not be relevant to our analytic task.
Obviously, we should gain slight profit if, following the example of Jung, we
were to emphasize the original unity of all instincts, and were to call the energy
expressed in all of them "libido." Since the sexual function cannot be
eliminated from psychic life by any device, we are forced to speak of sexual
and asexual libido. As in the past, we rightly retain the name libido for the
instincts of sexual life.
I believe, therefore, that the question, how far the justifiable distinction of the
instincts of sex and of self-preservation may be carried, is of little importance
for psychoanalysis; and psychoanalysis is moreover not competent to deal with
it. From a biological standpoint there are, to be sure, various reasons for
believing that this distinction is significant. Sexuality is the only function of the
living organism which extends beyond the individual and sees to his kinship
with the species. It is undeniable that its practice does not always benefit the
individual as do his other performances. For the price of ecstatic pleasures it
involves him in dangers which threaten his life and frequently cause death.
Probably peculiar metabolic processes, different from all others, are required to
maintain a part of the individual life for its progeny. The individual who places
himself in the foreground and regards his sexuality as a means to his
gratification is, from a biological point of view, only an episode in a series of
generations, a transient appendage to a germ-plasm which is virtually endowed
with immortality, just as though he were the temporary partner in a corporation
which continues to persist after his death.
 For psychoanalytic explanation of neuroses, however, there is no need to
enter upon these far-reaching implications. By separate observation of the
sexual and the ego instincts, we have gained the key to the understanding of
transference-neuroses. We were able to trace them back to the fundamental
situation where the sexual instinct and the instinct of self-preservation had
come in conflict with one another, or biologically although not so accurately,
expressed where the part played by the ego, that of independent individuality,
was opposed to the other, that of a link in a series of generations. Only human
beings are capable of such conflict, and therefore, taken all in all, neurosis is
the prerogative of man, and not of animals. The excessive development of his
libido and the elaboration of a varied and complicated psychic life thus made
possible, appear to have created the conditions prerequisite for conflict. It is
clear that these conditions are also responsible for the great progress that man
has made beyond his kinship with animals. The capacity for neurosis is really
only the reverse side of his talents and gifts. But these are only speculations,
which divert us from our task.
Until now we worked with the impulse that we can distinguish the ego and
the sexual instincts from one another by their manifestations. We could do this
without difficulty in the transference neuroses. We called the accumulation of
energy which the ego directed towards the object of its sexual striving libido
and all others, which proceeded from the instincts of self-preservation, interest.
We were able to achieve our first insight into the workings of psychic forces by
observing the accumulation of the libido, its transformations and its final
destiny. The transference neuroses furnished the best material for this. But the
ego, composed from various organizations, their construction and functioning,
remained hidden and we were led to believe that only the analysis of other
neurotic disturbances would raise the veil.
Very soon we began to extend these psychoanalytic conceptions to other
conditions. As early as 1908, K. Abraham asserted, after a discussion with me,
that the principal characteristic of dementia praecox (which may be considered
one of the psychoses) is that there is no libidinous occupation of objects (The
Psycho-sexual Differences between Hysteria and Dementia Praecox). But then
the question arose, what happens to the libido of the demented, which is
diverted from its objects? Abraham did not hesitate to give the answer, "It is
turned back upon the ego, and this reflected turning back is the source of
the megalomania in dementia praecox." This hallucination of greatness is
exactly comparable to the well-known over-estimation of the objects habitual to
lovers. So, for the first time, we gained an understanding of psychotic condition
by comparing it with the normal course of love.
These first interpretations of Abraham's have been maintained in
psychoanalysis, and have become the basis of our attitude towards the
psychoses. Slowly we familiarized ourselves with the idea that the libido,
which we find attached to certain objects, which expresses a striving to attain
gratification from these objects, may also forsake them and put in their place
the person's own ego. Gradually these ideas were developed more and more
consistently. The name for this placing of the libido—narcism—was borrowed
from one of the perversions described by P. Naecke. In it the grown individual
lavishes upon his own body all the affection usually devoted to some foreign
sex object.
We reflected that if such a fixation of libido on one's own body and person
instead of on some external object exists, this cannot be an exceptional or
trivial occurrence. It is much more probable that this narcism is the general and
original condition, out of which the love for an object later develops, without
however necessarily causing narcism to disappear. From the evolutionary
history of object-libido we remembered that in the beginning many sex
instincts seek auto-erotic gratification, and that this capacity for auto-eroticism
forms the basis for the retardation of sexuality in its education to conformity
with fact. And so, auto-eroticism was the sexual activity of the narcistic stage
in the placing of the libido.
To be brief: We represented the relation of the ego-libido to the object-libido
in a way which I can explain by an analogy from zoology. Think of the
simplest forms of life, which consist of a little lump of protoplasmic substance
which is only slightly differentiated. They stretch out protrusions, known as
pseudopia, into which the protoplasm flows. But they can withdraw these
protrusions and assume their original shape. Now we compare the stretching
out of these processes with the radiation of libido to the objects, while the
central mass of libido can remain in the ego, and we assume that under normal
conditions ego-libido can be changed into object-libido, and this can again be
taken up into the ego, without any trouble.
With the help of this representation we can now explain a great number of
psychic conditions, or to express it more modestly, describe them, in the
language of the libido theory; conditions that we must accredit to normal life,
such as the psychic attitude during love, during organic sickness, during sleep.
We assumed that the conditions of sleep rest upon withdrawal from the outer
world and concentration upon the wish to sleep. The nocturnal psychic activity
expressed in the dream we found in the service of a wish to sleep and,
moreover, governed by wholly egoistic motives. Continuing in the sense of
libido theory: sleep is a condition in which all occupations of objects, the
libidinous as well as the egoistic, are given up, and are withdrawn into the ego.
Does this not throw a new light upon recovery during sleep, and upon the
nature of exhaustion in general? The picture of blissful isolation in the intra-
uterine life, which the sleeper conjures up night after night, thus also completes
the picture from the psychic side. In the sleeper the original condition of libido
division is again restored, a condition of complete narcism in which libido and
ego-interest are still united and live indistinguishably in the self-sufficient ego.
We must observe two things: First, how can the conceptions of narcism and
egoism be distinguished? I believe narcism is the libidinous complement of
egoism. When we speak of egoism we mean only the benefits to the individual;
if we speak of narcism we also take into account his libidinous satisfaction. As
practical motives the two can be followed up separately to a considerable
degree. One can be absolutely egoistic, and still have strong libidinous
occupation of objects, in so far as the libidinous gratification by way of the
object serves the needs of the ego. Egoism will then take care that the striving
for the object results in no harm to the ego. One can be egoistic and at the same
time excessively narcistic, i.e., have very slight need of an object. This need
may be for direct sexual satisfaction or even for those higher desires, derived
from need, which we are in the habit of calling love as opposed to sensuality. In
all of these aspects, egoism is the self-evident, the constant, and narcism the
variable element. The antithesis of egoism, altruism, is not the same as the
conception of libidinous occupation of objects. Altruism differs from it by the
absence of desire for sexual satisfaction. But in the state of being completely in
love, altruism and libidinous occupation with an object clash. The sex object as
a rule draws upon itself a part of the narcism of the ego. This is generally called
"sexual over-estimation" of the object. If the altruistic transformation from
egoism to the sex object is added, the sex object becomes all powerful; it has
virtually sucked up the ego.
I think you will find it a pleasant change if after the dry phantasy of science I
present to you a poetic representation of the economic contrast between
narcism and being in love. I take it from the Westostliche Divans of Goethe:

SULEIKA:

Conqueror and serf and nation;

They proclaim it joyously;

Mankind's loftiest elation,

Shines in personality.

Life's enchantment lures and lingers,

Of yourself is not afar,

All may slip through passive fingers,

If you tarry as you are.

HATEM:

Never could I be thus ravished,

Other thoughts are in my mind,

All the gladness earth has lavished

In Suleika's charms I find.

When I cherish her, then only

Dearer to myself I grow,

If she turned to leave me lonely

I should lose the self I know.

Hatem's happiness were over,—

But his changeling soul would glide

Into any favored lover

 Whom she fondles at her side.

The second observation is supplementary to the dream theory. We cannot

explain the origin of the dream unless we assume that the suppressed
unconscious has achieved a certain independence of the ego. It does not
conform to the wish for sleep and retains its hold on the energies that have
seized it, even when all the occupations with objects dependent upon the ego
have been released for the benefit of sleep. Not until then can we understand
how this unconscious can take advantage of the nocturnal discontinuance or
deposition of the censor, and can seize control of fragments left over from the
day to fashion a forbidden dream wish from them. On the other hand, it is to the
already existing connections with these supposed elements that these fragments
owe a part of the resistance directed against the withdrawal of the libido, and
controlled by the wish for sleep. We also wish to supplement our conception of
dream formation with this trait of dynamic importance.
Organic diseases, painful irritations, inflammation of the organs create a
condition which clearly results in freeing the libido of its objects. The
withdrawn libido again finds itself in the ego and occupies the diseased part of
the part. We may even venture to assert that under these conditions the
withdrawal of the libido from its objects is more conspicuous than the
withdrawal of egoistic interest from the outside world. This seems to open the
way to an understanding of hypochondria, where an organ occupies the ego in a
similar way without being diseased, according to our conception. I shall resist
the temptation of continuing along this line, or of discussing other situations
which we can understand or represent through the assumption that the object
libido travels to the ego. For I am eager to meet two objections, which I know
are absorbing your attention. In the first place, you want to call me to account
for my insistence upon distinguishing in sleep, in sickness and in similar
situations between libido and interest, sexual instincts and ego instincts, since
throughout the observations can be explained by assuming a single and uniform
energy, which, freely mobile, occupies now the object, now the ego, and enters
into the services of one or the other of these impulses. And, secondly, how can
I venture to treat the freeing of libido from its object as the source of a
pathological condition, since such transformation of object-libido into ego-
libido—or more generally, ego-energy—belongs to the normal, daily and
nightly repeated occurrences of psychic dynamics?
The answer is: Your first objection sounds good. The discussion of the
conditions of sleep, of sickness and of being in love would in themselves
probably never have led to a distinction between ego-libido and object-libido,
or between libido and interest. But you do not take into account the
investigations from which we have set out, in the light of which we now regard
the psychic situations under discussion. The necessity of distinguishing
between libido and interest, that is, between sexual instincts and those of self-
preservation, is forced upon us by our insight into the conflict out of which the
transference neuroses emerge. We can no longer reckon without it. The
assumption that object-libido can change into the ego-libido, in other words,
that we must reckon with an ego-libido, appeared to us the only possible one
wherewith to solve the riddle of the so-called narcistic neuroses—for instance,
dementia praecox—or to justify the similarities and differences in a comparison
of hysteria and compulsion. We now apply to sickness, sleep and love that
which we found undeniably affirmed elsewhere. We may proceed with such
applications as far as they will go. The only assertion that is not a direct
refutation of our analytic experience is that libido remains libido whether it is
directed towards objects or toward the ego itself, and is never transferred into
egoistic interest, and vice-versa. But this assertion is of equal weight with the
distinction of sex and ego instincts which we have already critically appraised,
and which we will maintain from methodological motives until it may possibly
be disproved.
Your second objection, too, raises a justified question, but it points in a
wrong direction. To be sure the retreat of object-libido into the ego is not
purely pathogenic; we see that it occurs each time before going to sleep, only to
be released again upon awaking. The little protoplasmic animal draws in its
protrusions, only to send them out again on a later occasion. But it is quite
another matter when a specific, very energetic process compels the withdrawal
of libido from the object. The libido has become narcistic and cannot find its
way back to the object, and this hindrance to the mobility of the libido certainly
becomes pathogenic. It appears that an accumulation of narcistic libido cannot
be borne beyond a certain point. We can imagine that the reason for occupation
with the object is that the ego found it necessary to send out its libido in order
not to become diseased because it was pent up. If it were our plan to go further
into the subject of dementia praecox, I would show you that this process which
frees the libido from the objects and bars the way back to them, is closely
related to the process of suppression, and must be considered as its counterpart.
But above all you would recognize familiar ground, for the conditions of these
processes are practically identical, as far as we can now see, with those of
suppression. The conflict appears to be the same, and to take place between the
same forces. The reason for a result as different as, for instance, the result in
hysteria, can be found only in a difference of dispositions. The vulnerable point
in the libido development of these patients lies in another phase; the controlling
fixation, which, as you will remember, permits the breach resulting in the
formation of symptoms, is in another place probably in the stage of primitive
narcism, to which dementia praecox returns in its final stage. It is noteworthy
that for all the narcistic neuroses, we must assume fixation points of the libido
which reach back into far earlier phases of development than in cases of
hysteria or compulsion neuroses. But you have heard that the conceptions
obtained in our study of transference neuroses are sufficient to orient us in the
narcistic neuroses, which present far greater practical difficulties. The
similarities are considerable; it is fundamentally the same field of observation.
But you can easily imagine how hopeless the explanations of these conditions,
which belong to psychiatry, appear to him who is not equipped for this task
with an analytic knowledge of transference neuroses.
The picture given by the symptoms of dementia praecox, which, moreover, is
highly variable, is not exclusively determined by the symptoms. These result
from forcing the libido away from the objects and accumulating it in the ego in
the form of narcistic libido. A large space is occupied by other phenomena,
which result from the impulses of the libido to regain the objects, and so show
an attempt toward restitution and healing. These symptoms are in fact the more
conspicuous, the more clamorous; they show an unquestionable similarity to
those of hysteria, or less often to those of compulsion neurosis, and yet they are
different in every respect. It appears that in dementia praecox the libido in its
endeavor to return to the objects, i.e., to the images of the objects, really
captures something, but only their shadows—I mean, the verbal images
belonging to them. This is not the place to discuss this matter, but I believe that
these reversed impulses of the libido have permitted us an insight into what
really determines the difference between a conscious and an unconscious
representation.
I have now brought you into the field where we may expect the further
progress of analytic work. Since we can now employ the conception of ego-
libido, the narcistic neuroses have become accessible to us. We are confronted
with the problem of finding a dynamic explanation of these conditions and at
the same time of enlarging our knowledge of psychic life by an understanding
of the ego. The ego psychology, which we strive to understand, must not be
founded upon introspective data, but rather, as in the libido, upon analysis of
the disturbances and decompositions of the ego. When this greater task is
accomplished we shall probably disparage our previous knowledge of the fate
of the libido which we gained from our study of the transference neuroses. But
there is still much to be said in this matter. Narcistic neuroses can scarcely be
approached by the same technique which served us in the transference
neuroses. Soon you will hear why. After forging ahead a little in the study of
narcistic neuroses we always seem to come to a wall which impedes progress.
You know that in the transference neuroses we also encountered such barriers
of resistance, but we were able to break them down piece by piece. In narcistic
neuroses the resistance is insuperable; at best we are permitted to cast a curious
glance over the wall to spy out what is taking place on the other side. Our
technical methods must be replaced by others; we do not yet know whether or
not we shall be able to find such a substitute. To be sure, even these patients
furnish us with ample material. They do say many things, though not in answer
to our questions, and for the time being we are forced to interpret these
utterances through the understanding we have gained from the symptoms of
transference neuroses. The coincidence is sufficiently great to assure us a good
beginning. How far this technique will go, remains to be seen.
There are additional difficulties that impede our progress. The narcistic
conditions and the psychoses related to them can only be solved by observers
who have schooled themselves in analytic study of transference neuroses. But
our psychiatrists do not study psychoanalysis and we psychoanalysts see too
few psychiatric cases. A race of psychiatrists that has gone through the school
of psychoanalysis as a preparatory science most first grow up. The beginnings
of this are now being made in America, where many leading psychiatrists
explain the teachings of psychoanalysis to their students, and where many
owners of sanatoriums and directors of institutes for the insane take pains to
observe their patients in the light of these teachings. But even here we have
occasionally been successful in casting a glance over the narcistic wall and I
shall tell you a few things that we think we have discovered.
The disease of paranoia, chronic systematic insanity, is given a very
uncertain position by the attempts at classification of present-day psychiatry.
There is no doubt of its close relationship to dementia praecox. I once was so
bold as to propose that paranoia and dementia praecox could be classed
together under the common name of paraphrenia. The types of paranoia are
described according to their content as: megalomania, the mania of persecution,
eroto mania, mania of jealousy, etc. From psychiatry we do not expect attempts
at explanation. As an example of such an attempt, to be sure an antiquated and
not entirely valid example, I might mention the attempt to develop one
symptom directly out of another by means of an intellectual rationalization, as:
the patient who primarily believes he is being persecuted draws the conclusion
from this persecution that he must be an extraordinarily important personality
and thus develops megalomania. In our analytical conception megalomania is
the immediate outcome of exaggeration of the ego, which results from the
drawing-in of libidinous occupation with objects, a secondary narcism as a
recurrence of the originally early infantile form. In cases of the mania of
persecution we have noticed a few things that lead us to follow a definite track.
In the first place, we observed that in the great majority of cases the persecutor
was of the same sex as the persecuted. This could still be explained in a
harmless way, but in a few carefully studied cases it was clearly shown that the
person of the same sex, who was most loved in normal times, became the
persecutor after the malady set in. A further development is made possible by
the fact that one loved person is replaced by another, according to familiar
affinities, e.g., the father by the teacher or the superior. We concluded from
such ever-increasing experiences, that paranoia persecutoria is the form in
which the individual guards himself against a homosexual tendency that has
become too powerful. The change from affection to hate, which notoriously
may take the form of serious threats against the life of the loved and hated
person, expresses the transformation of libidinous impulse into fear, which is a
regularly recurring result of the process of suppression. As an illustration I shall
cite the last case in which I made observations on this subject. A young
physician had to be sent away from his home town because he had threatened
the life of the son of a university professor, who up to that time had been his
best friend. He ascribed truly devilish intentions to his erstwhile friend and
credited him with power of a demon. He was to blame for all the misfortunes
that had in recent years befallen the family of the patient, for all his personal
and social ill-luck. But this was not enough. The wicked friend, and his father
the professor, had been the cause of the war and had called the Russians into
the land. He had forfeited his life a thousand times and our patient was
convinced that with the death of the culprit all misfortune would come to an
end. And yet his old affection for his friend was so great that it had paralyzed
his hand when he had had the opportunity of shooting down the enemy at close
quarters. In my short consultations with the patient, I discovered that the
friendship between the two dated back to early school-life. Once at least the
bonds of friendship had been over-stepped; a night spent together had been the
occasion for complete sexual intercourse. Our patient never felt attracted to
women, as would have been natural to his age or his charming personality. At
one time he was engaged to a beautiful and distinguished young girl, but she
broke off the engagement because she found so little affection in her fiancé.
Years later his malady broke out just at that moment when for the first time he
had succeeded in giving complete gratification to a woman. When this woman
embraced him, full of gratitude and devotion, he suddenly felt a strange pain
which cut around his skull like a sharp incision. His later interpretation of this
sensation was that an incision such as is used to expose a part of the brain had
been performed upon him, and since his friend had become a pathological
anatomist, he gradually came to the conclusion that he alone could have sent
him this last woman as a temptation. From that time on his eyes were also
opened to the other persecutions in which he was to be the victim of the
intrigues of his former friend.
But how about those cases where the persecutor is not of the same sex as the
persecuted, where our explanation of a guard against homosexual libido is
apparently contradicted? A short time ago I had occasion to investigate such a
case and was able to glean corroboration from this apparent contradiction. A
young girl thought she was followed by a man, with whom she had twice had
intimate relations. She had, as a matter of fact, first laid these maniacal
imputations at the door of a woman, whom we may consider as having played
the part of a mother-substitute in her psychic life. Only after the second
meeting did she progress to the point of diverting this maniacal idea from the
woman and of transferring it to the man. The condition that the persecutor must
be of the same sex was also originally maintained in this instance. In her claim
before the lawyer and the physician, this patient did not mention this first stage
of her mania, and this caused the appearance of a contradiction to our theory of
paranoia.
Homosexual choice of object is originally more natural to narcism than the
heterosexual. If it is a matter of thwarting a strong and undesirable homosexual
impulse, the way back to narcism is made especially easy. Until now I have had
very little opportunity of speaking to you about the fundamental conditions of
love-life, so far as we know them, and now I cannot make up for lost time. I
only want to point out that the choice of an object, that progress in the
development of the libido which comes after the narcistic stage, can proceed
according to two different types—either according to the narcistic type, which
puts a very similar personality in the place of the personal ego, or according to
the dependent type, which chooses those persons who have become valuable by
satisfying needs of life other than as objects of the libido. We also accredit a
strong fixation of the libido to the narcistic type of object-choice when there is
a disposition toward manifest homosexuality.
You will recall that in our first meeting of this semester I told you about the
case of a woman who suffered from the mania of jealousy. Since we are so near
the end you certainly will be glad to hear the psychoanalytic explanation of a
maniacal idea. But I have less to say about it than you expect. The maniacal
idea as well as the compulsion idea cannot be assailed by logical arguments or
actual experience. This is explained by their relation to the unconscious, which
is represented by the maniacal idea or the compulsion idea, and held down by
whichever is effective. The difference between the two is based upon respective
localization and dynamic relations of the two conditions.
As in paranoia, so also in melancholia, of which, moreover, very different
clinical forms are described. We have discovered a point of vantage which will
yield us an insight into the inner structure of the condition. We realize that the
self-accusations with which these melancholic patients torture themselves in
the most pitiless way, really apply to another person, namely, the sex object
which they have lost, or which through some fault has lost value for them.
From this we may conclude that the melancholic has withdrawn his libido from
the object. Through a process which we designate as "narcistic identification"
the object is built up within the ego itself, is, so to say, projected upon the ego.
Here I can give you only a descriptive representation, as yet without reference
to the topical and dynamic relations. The personal ego is now treated in the
same manner as the abandoned object, and suffers all the aggression and
expressions of revenge which were planned for the object. Even the suicidal
tendencies of melancholia are more comprehensible when we consider that this
bitterness of the patient falls alike on the ego itself and on the object of its love
and hate. In melancholia as well as in other narcistic conditions a feature of
emotional life is strikingly shown which, since the time of Bleuler, we have
been accustomed to designate as ambivalence. By this we mean that hostile and
affectionate feelings are directed against one and the same person. I have, in the
course of these discussions, unfortunately not been in a position to tell you
more about this emotional ambivalence.
We have, in addition to narcistic identification, an hysterical identification as
well, which moreover has been known to us for a much longer time. I wish it
were possible to determine clearly the difference between the two. Of the
periodic and cyclic forms of melancholia I can tell you something that you will
certainly be glad to hear, for it is possible, under favorable circumstances—I
have twice had the experience—to prevent these emotional conditions (or their
antitheses) by means of analytic treatment in the free intervals between the
attacks. We learn that in melancholia as well as in mania, it is a matter of
finding a special way for solving the conflict, the prerequisites for which
entirely coincide with those of other neuroses. You can imagine how much
there still is for psychoanalysis to learn in this field.
I told you, too, that we hoped to gain a knowledge of the structure of the ego,
and of the separate factors out of which it is built by means of the analysis of
narcistic conditions. In one place we have already made a beginning. From the
analysis of the maniacal delusion of being watched we concluded that in the
ego there is really an agent which continually watches, criticizes and compares
the other part of the ego and thus opposes it. We believe that the patient imparts
to us a truth that is not yet sufficiently appreciated, when he complains that all
his actions are spied upon and watched, all his thoughts recorded and criticized.
He errs only in transferring this distressing force to something alien, outside of
himself. He feels the dominance of a factor in his ego, which compares his
actual ego and all of its activities to an ideal ego that he has created in the
course of his development. We also believe that the creation of this ideal ego
took place with the purpose of again establishing that self-satisfaction which is
bound up with the original infantile narcism, but which since then has
experienced so many disturbances and disparagements. In this self-observing
agent we recognize the ego-censor, the conscience; it is the same factor which
at night exercises dream-censorship, and which creates the suppressions against
inadmissible wish-impulses. Under analysis in the maniacal delusion of being
watched it reveals its origin in the influence of parents, tutors and social
environment and in the identification of the ego with certain of these model
individuals.
These are some of the conclusions which the application of psychoanalysis to
narcistic conditions has yielded us. They are certainly all too few, and they
often lack that accuracy which can only be acquired in a new field with the
attainment of absolute familiarity. We owe them all to the exploitation of the
conception of ego-libido or narcistic libido, by the aid of which we have
extended to narcistic neuroses those observations which were confirmed in the
transference neuroses. But now you will ask, is it possible for us to succeed in
subordinating all the disturbances of narcistic conditions and the psychoses to
the libido theory in such a way that in every case we recognize the libidinous
factor of psychic life as the cause of the malady, and never make an
abnormality in the functioning of the instincts of self-preservation answerable?
Ladies and gentlemen, this conclusion does not seem urgent to me, and above
all not ripe for decision. We can best leave it calmly to the progress of the
science. I should not be surprised to find that the power to exert a pathogenic
influence is really an exclusive prerogative of the libidinous impulses, and that
the libido theory will celebrate its triumphs along the whole line from the
simplest true neurosis to the most difficult psychotic derangement of the
individual. For we know it to be a characteristic of the libido that it is
continually struggling against subordinating itself to the realities of the world.
But I consider it most probable that the ego instincts are indirectly swept along
by the pathogenic excitations of the libido and forced into a functional
disturbance. Moreover, I cannot see any defeat for our trend of investigation
when we are confronted with the admission that in difficult psychoses the ego
impulses themselves are fundamentally led astray; the future will teach us—or
at least it will teach you. Let me return for one moment more to fear, in order to
eliminate one last ambiguity that we have left. We have said that the relation
between fear and the libido, which in other respects seems clearly defined, does
not fit in with the assumption that in the face of danger real fear should become
the expression of the instinct of self-preservation. This, however, can hardly be
doubted. But suppose the emotion of fear is not contested by the egoistic ego
impulse, but rather by the ego-libido? The condition of fear is in all cases
purposeless and its lack of purpose is obvious when it reaches a higher level. It
then disturbs the action, be it flight or defense, which alone is purposeful, and
which serves the ends of self-preservation. If we accredit the emotional
component of actual fear to the ego-libido, and the accompanying activity to
the egoistic instinct to self-preservation, we have overcome every theoretical
difficulty. Furthermore, you do not really believe that we flee because we
experience fear? On the contrary, we first are afraid and then take to flight from
the same motive that is awakened by the realization of danger. Men who have
survived the endangering of their lives tell us that they were not at all afraid,
they only acted. They turned the weapon against the wild animal, and that was
in fact the most purposeful thing to do.

TWENTY-SEVENTH LECTURE

GENERAL THEORY OF THE NEUROSES

Transference

WE are nearing the close of our discussions, and you probably cherish
certain expectations, which shall not be disappointed. You think, I suppose, that
I have not guided you through thick and thin of psychoanalytic subject matter
to dismiss you without a word about therapy, which furnishes the only
possibility of carrying on psychoanalysis. I cannot possibly omit this subject,
for the observation of some of its aspects will teach you a new fact, without
which the understanding of the diseases we have examined would be most
incomplete.
I know that you do not expect any guidance in the technique of practising
analysis for therapeutic purposes. You wish to know only along what general
lines psychoanalytic therapy works and approximately what it accomplishes.
And you have an undeniable right to know this. I shall not actually tell you,
however, but shall insist that you guess it yourselves.
Only think! You know everything essential, from the conditions which
precipitate the illness to all the factors at work within. Where is there room for
therapeutic influence? In the first place, there is hereditary disposition; we do
not speak of it often because it is strongly emphasized from another quarter,
and we have nothing new to say about it. But do not think that we
underestimate it. Just because we are therapeutists, we feel its power distinctly.
At any rate, we cannot change it; it is a given fact which erects a barrier to our
efforts. In the second place, there is the influence of the early experiences of
childhood, which are in the habit of becoming sharply emphasized under
analysis; they belong to the past and we cannot undo them. And then
everything that we include in the term "actual forbearance"—misfortunes of
life out of which privations of love arise, poverty, family discord, unfortunate
choice in marriage, unfavorable social conditions and the severity of moral
claims. These would certainly offer a foothold for very effectual therapy. But it
would have to be the kind of therapy which, according to the Viennese folk-
tale, Emperor Joseph practiced: the beneficial interference of a potentate,
before whose will men bow and difficulties vanish. But who are we, to include
such charity in the methods of our therapy? Poor as we are, powerless in
society, forced to earn our living by practicing medicine, we are not even in a
position to treat free of charge those patients who are unable to pay, as
physicians who employ other methods of treatment can do. Our therapy is too
long drawn-out, too extended for that. But perhaps you are still holding to one
of the factors already mentioned, and think that you have found a factor
through which our influence may be effective. If the restrictions of morality
which are imposed by society have a share in the privation forced upon the
patient, treatment might give him the courage, or possibly even the prescription
itself, to cross these barriers, might tell him how gratification and health can be
secured in the renunciation of that ideal which society has held up to us but
often disregards. One grows healthy then, by giving one's sexuality full reign.
Such analytic treatment, however, would be darkened by a shadow; it does not
serve our recognized morality. The gain to the individual is a loss to society.
But, ladies and gentlemen, who has misinformed you to this degree? It is
inconceivable that the advice to give one's sexuality full reign can play a part in
analytic therapy, if only from the circumstance we have ourselves described,
that there is going on within the patient a bitter conflict between libidinous
impulse and sexual suppression, between sensual and ascetic tendencies. This
conflict is not abolished by giving one of these tendencies the victory over its
opponent. We see that in the case of the nervous, asceticism has retained the
upper hand. The consequence of this is that the suppressed sexual desire gains
breathing space by the development of symptoms. If, on the other hand, we
were to give the victory to sexuality, symptoms would have to replace the
sexual suppression, which has been pushed aside. Neither of the two decisions
can end the inner conflict, one part always remains unsatisfied. There are only
a few cases wherein the conflict is so labile, that a factor such as the
intervention of the physician could be decisive, and these cases really require
no analytic treatment. Persons who can be so much influenced by a physician
would have found some solution without him. You know that when an
abstinent young man decides upon illegitimate sex-intercourse, or when an
unsatisfied woman seeks compensation from another man, they have generally
not waited for the permission of a physician, far less of an analyst, to do this.
In studying the situation, one essential point is generally overlooked, that the
pathogenic conflict of the neurotic must not be confused with normal struggles
between psychic impulses of which all have their root in the same
psychological soil. The neurotic struggle is a strife of forces, one of which has
attained the level of the fore-conscious and the conscious, while the other has
been held back in the unconscious stage. That is why the conflict can have no
outcome; the struggling parties approach each other as little as in the well-
known instance of the polar-bear and the whale. A real decision can be reached
only if both meet on the same ground. To accomplish this is, I believe, the sole
task of therapy.
Moreover, I assure you that you are misinformed if you assume that advice
and guidance in the affairs of life is an integral part of the analytic influence.
On the contrary, we reject this role of the mentor as far as possible. Above all,
we wish to attain independent decisions on the part of the patient. With this
intention in mind, we require him to postpone all vital resolutions such as
choice of a career, marriage or divorce, until the close of the treatment. You
must confess that this is not what you had imagined. It is only in the case of
certain very young or entirely helpless persons that we cannot insist upon the
desired limitation. Here we must combine the function of physician and
educator; we are well aware of the responsibility and behave with the necessary
precaution.
Judging from the zeal with which I defend myself against the accusation that
analytic treatment urges the nervous person to give his sexuality full reign, you
must not gather that we influence him for the benefit of conventional morality.
We are just as far removed from that. We are no reformers, it is true, only
observers, but we cannot help observing with critical eyes, and we have found
it impossible to take the part of conventional sex morality, or to estimate highly
the way in which society has tried to regulate the problems of sexual life in
practice. We can prove to society mathematically that its code of ethics has
exacted more sacrifices than is its worth, and that its procedure rests neither on
veracity nor wisdom. We cannot spare our patients the task of listening to this
criticism. We accustom them to weigh sexual matters, as well as others,
without prejudice; and when, after the completion of the cure, they have
become independent and choose some intermediate course between
unrestrained sexuality and asceticism, our conscience is not burdened by the
consequences. We tell ourselves: whoever has been successfully educated in
being true to himself is permanently protected against the danger of immorality,
even if his moral standard diverges from that of society. Let us, moreover, be
careful not to overestimate the significance of the problem of abstinence with
respect to its influence on neuroses. Only the minority of pathogenic situations
of forbearance, with a subsequent condition of pent-up libido, can be resolved
without more ado by such sexual intercourse as can be procured with little
trouble.
And so you cannot explain the therapeutic influence of psychoanalysis by
saying that it simply recommends giving full sway to sexuality. You must seek
another solution. I think that while I was refuting this supposition of yours, one
of my remarks put you on the right track. Our usefulness consists in replacing
the unconscious by the conscious, in translating the unconscious into the
conscious. You are right; that is exactly it. By projecting the unconscious into
the conscious, we do away with suppressions, we remove conditions of
symptom formation and transform a pathogenic into a normal conflict which
can be decided in some way or other. This is the only psychic change we
produce in our patients; its extent is the extent of our helpfulness. Wherever no
suppression and no analogous psychic process can be undone, there is no place
for our therapy.
We can express the aim of our efforts by various formulae of rendering the
unconscious conscious, removing suppressions, filling out amnestic gaps—it all
amounts to the same thing. But perhaps this admission does not satisfy you.
You imagined that when a nervous person became cured something very
different happened, that after having been subjected to the laborious process of
psychoanalysis, he was transformed into a different human being. And now I
tell you that the entire result is only that he has a little less of the unconscious, a
little more of the conscious within him. Well, you probably underestimate the
significance of such an inner change. The person cured of neurosis has really
become another human being. Fundamentally, of course, he has remained the
same. That is to say, he has only become what he might have been under the
most favorable conditions. But that is saying a great deal. When you learn all
that has to be done, the effort required to effect apparently so slight a change in
psychic life, the significance of such a difference in the psychic realm will be
credible to you.
I shall digress for a moment to ask whether you know what is meant by a
causal therapy? This name is given to the procedure which does not take the
manifestations of disease for its point of departure, but seeks to remove the
causes of disease. Is our psychoanalytical therapy causal or not? The answer is
not simple, but perhaps it will give us the opportunity of convincing ourselves
that this point of departure is comparatively fruitless. In so far as analytical
therapy does not concern itself immediately with the removal of symptoms, it
may be termed causal. Yet in another respect, you might say this would hardly
follow. For we have followed the causal chain back far beyond the
suppressions to the instinctive tendencies and their relative intensity as given
by the constitution of the patient, and finally the nature of the digression in the
abnormal process of its development. Assume for a moment that it were
possible to influence these functions chemically, to increase or to decrease the
quantity of the libido that happens to be present, to strengthen one impulse at
the expense of another. This would be causal therapy in its true sense and our
analysis would have furnished the indispensable preparatory work of
reconnaissance. You know that there is as yet no possibility of so influencing
the processes of the libido. Our psychic therapy interposes elsewhere, not
exactly at those sources of the phenomena which have been disclosed to us, but
sufficiently far beyond the symptoms, at an opening in the structure of the
disease which has become accessible to us by means of peculiar conditions.
What must we do in order to replace the unconscious by the conscious in our
patient? At one time we thought this was quite simple, that all we had to do was
to reconstruct the unconscious and then tell the patient about it. But we already
know this was a shortsighted error. Our knowledge of the unconscious has not
the same value as his; if we communicate our knowledge to him it will not
stand in place of the unconscious within him, but will exist beside it, and only a
very small change will have been effected. We must rather think of the
unconscious as localized, and must seek it in memory at the point where it
came into existence by means of a suppression. This suppression must be
removed before the substitution of the conscious for the unconscious can be
successfully effected. How can such a suppression be removed? Here our task
enters a second phase. First to find the suppression, then to remove the
resistance by which this suppression is maintained.
How can we do away with resistance? In the same way—by reconstructing it
and confronting the patient with it. For resistance arises from suppression, from
the very suppression which we are trying to break up, or from an earlier one. It
has been established by the counter-attack that was instigated to suppress the
offensive impulse. And so now we do the very thing we intended at the outset:
interpret, reconstruct, communicate—but now we do it in the right place. The
counter-seizure of the idea or resistance is not part of the unconscious but of the
ego, which is our fellow-worker. This holds true even if resistance is not
conscious. We know that the difficulty arises from the ambiguity of the word
"unconscious," which may connote either a phenomenon or a system. That
seems very difficult, but it is only a repetition, isn't it? We were prepared for it
a long time ago. We expect resistance to be relinquished, the counter-siege to
collapse, when our interpretation has enabled the ego to recognize it. With what
impulses are we able to work in such a case? In the first place, the patient's
desire to become well, which has led him to accommodate himself to co-
operate with us in the task of the cure; in the second place, the help of his
intelligence, which is supported by the interpretation we offer him. There is no
doubt that after we have made clear to him what he may expect, the patient's
intelligence can identify resistances, and find their translation into the
suppressions more readily. If I say to you, "Look up into the sky, you can see a
balloon there," you will find it more readily than if I had just asked you to look
up to see whether you could discover anything. And unless the student who for
the first time works with a microscope is told by his teacher what he may look
for, he will not see anything, even if it is present and quite visible.
And now for the fact! In a large number of forms of nervous illness, in
hysteria, conditions of anxiety and compulsion neuroses, one hypothesis is
correct. By finding the suppression, revealing resistance, interpreting the thing
suppressed, we really succeed in solving the problem, in overcoming
resistance, in removing suppression, in transforming the unconscious into the
conscious. While doing this we gain the clearest impression of the violent
struggle that takes place in the patient's soul for the subjugation of resistance—
a normal psychological struggle, in one psychic sphere between the motives
that wish to maintain the counter-siege and those which are willing to give it
up. The former are the old motives that at one time effected suppression;
among the latter are those that have recently entered the conflict, to decide it,
we trust, in the sense we favor. We have succeeded in reviving the old conflict
of the suppression, in reopening the case that had already been decided. The
new material we contribute consists in the first place of the warning, that the
former solution of the conflict had led to illness, and the promise that another
will pave the way to health; secondly, the powerful change of all conditions
since the time of that first rejection. At that time the ego had been weak,
infantile and may have had reason to denounce the claims of the libido as if
they were dangerous. Today it is strong, experienced and is supported by the
assistance of the physician. And so we may expect to guide the revived conflict
to a better issue than a suppression, and in hysteria, fear and compulsion
neuroses, as I have said before, success justifies our claims.
There are other forms of illness, however, in which our therapeutic procedure
never is successful, even though the causal conditions are similar. Though this
may be characterized topically in a different way, in them there was also an
original conflict between the ego and libido, which led to suppression. Here,
too, it is possible to discover the occasions when suppressions occurred in the
life of the patient. We employ the same procedure, are prepared to furnish the
same promises, give the same kind of help. We again present to the patient the
connections we expect him to discover, and we have in our favor the same
interval in time between the treatment and these suppressions favoring a
solution of the conflict; yet in spite of these conditions, we are not able to
overcome the resistance, or to remove the suppression. These patients,
suffering from paranoia, melancholia, and dementia praecox, remain untouched
on the whole, and proof against psychoanalytic therapy. What is the reason for
this? It is not lack of intelligence; we require, of course, a certain amount of
intellectual ability in our patients; but those suffering from paranoia, for
instance, who effect such subtle combinations of facts, certainly are not in want
of it. Nor can we say that other motive forces are lacking. Patients suffering
from melancholia, in contrast to those afflicted with paranoia, are profoundly
conscious of being ill, of suffering greatly, but they are not more accessible.
Here we are confronted with a fact we do not understand, which bids us doubt
if we have really understood all the conditions of success in other neuroses.
In the further consideration of our dealings with hysterical and compulsion
neurotics we soon meet with a second fact, for which we were not at all
prepared. After a while we notice that these patients behave toward us in a very
peculiar way. We thought that we had accounted for all the motive forces that
could come into play, that we had rationalized the relation between the patient
and ourselves until it could be as readily surveyed as an example in arithmetic,
and yet some force begins to make itself felt that we had not considered in our
calculations. This unexpected something is highly variable. I shall first describe
those of its manifestations which occur frequently and are easy to understand.
We see our patient, who should be occupying himself only with finding a
way out of his painful conflicts, become especially interested in the person of
the physician. Everything connected with this person is more important to him
than his own affairs and diverts him from his illness. Dealings with him are
very pleasant for the time being. He is especially cordial, seeks to show his
gratitude wherever he can, and manifests refinements and merits of character
that we hardly had expected to find. The physician forms a very favorable
opinion of the patient and praises the happy chance that permitted him to render
assistance to so admirable a personality. If the physician has the opportunity of
speaking to the relatives of the patient he hears with pleasure that this esteem is
returned. At home the patient never tires of praising the physician, of prizing
advantages which he constantly discovers. "He adores you, he trusts you
blindly, everything you say is a revelation to him," the relatives say. Here and
there one of the chorus observes more keenly and remarks, "It is a positive bore
to hear him talk, he speaks only of you; you are his only subject of
conversation."
Let us hope that the physician is modest enough to ascribe the patient's
estimation of his personality to the encouragement that has been offered him
and to the widening of his intellectual horizon through the astounding and
liberating revelations which the cure entails. Under these conditions analysis
progressed splendidly. The patient understands every suggestion, he
concentrates on the problems that the treatment requires him to solve,
reminiscences and ideas flood his mind. The physician is surprised by the
certainty and depth of these interpretations and notices with satisfaction how
willingly the sick man receives the new psychological facts which are so hotly
contested by the healthy persons in the world outside. An objective
improvement in the condition of the patient, universally admitted, goes hand in
hand with this harmonious relation of the physician to the patient under
analysis.
But we cannot always expect to have fair weather. There comes a day when
the storm breaks. Difficulties turn up in the treatment. The patient asserts that
he can think of nothing more. We are under the impression that he is no longer
interested in the work, that he lightly passes over the injunction that, heedless
of any critical impulse, he must say everything that comes to his mind. He
behaves as though he were not under treatment, as though he had closed no
agreement with the physician; he is clearly obsessed by something he does not
wish to divulge. This is a situation which endangers the success of the
treatment. We are distinctly confronted with a tremendous resistance. What can
have happened?
Provided we are able once more to clarify the situation, we recognize the
cause of the disturbance to have been intense affectionate emotions, which the
patient has transferred to the physician. This is certainly not justified either by
the behavior of the physician or by the relations the treatment has created. The
way in which this affection is manifested and the goals it strives for will depend
on the personal affiliations of the two parties involved. When we have here a
young girl and a man who is still young we receive the impression of normal
love. We find it quite natural that a girl should fall in love with a man with
whom she is alone a great deal, with whom she discusses intimate matters, who
appears to her in the advantageous light of a beneficent adviser. In this we
probably overlook the fact that in a neurotic girl we should rather presuppose a
derangement in her capacity to love. The more the personal relations of
physician and patient diverge from this hypothetical case, the more are we
puzzled to find the same emotional relation over and over again. We can
understand that a young woman, unhappy in her marriage, develops a serious
passion for her physician, who is still free; that she is ready to seek divorce in
order to belong to him, or even does not hesitate to enter into a secret love
affair, in case the conventional obstacles loom too large. Similar things are
known to occur outside of psychoanalysis. Under these circumstances,
however, we are surprised to hear women and girls make remarks that reveal a
certain attitude toward the problems of the cure. They always knew that love
alone could cure them, and from the very beginning of their treatment they
anticipated that this relationship would yield them what life had denied. This
hope alone has spurred them on to exert themselves during the treatments, to
overcome all the difficulties in communicating their disclosures. We add on our
own account—"and to understand so easily everything that is generally most
difficult to believe." But we are amazed by such a confession; it upsets our
calculations completely. Can it be that we have omitted the most important
factor from our hypothesis?
 And really, the more experience we gain, the less we can deny this
correction, which shames our knowledge. The first few times we could still
believe that the analytic cure had met with an accidental interruption, not
inherent to its purpose. But when this affectionate relation between physician
and patient occurs regularly in every new case, under the most
unfavorable conditions and even under grotesque circumstances; when it occurs
in the case of the elderly woman, and is directed toward the grey-beard, or to
one in whom, according to our judgment, no seductive attractions exist, we
must abandon the idea of an accidental interruption, and realize that we are
dealing with a phenomenon which is closely interwoven with the nature of the
illness.
The new fact which we recognize unwillingly is termed transference. We
mean a transference of emotions to the person of the physician, because we do
not believe that the situation of the cure justifies the genesis of such feelings.
We rather surmise that this readiness toward emotion originated elsewhere, that
it was prepared within the patient, and that the opportunity given by analytic
treatment caused it to be transferred to the person of the physician.
Transference may occur as a stormy demand for love or in a more moderate
form; in place of the desire to be his mistress, the young girl may wish to be
adopted as the favored daughter of the old man, the libidinous desire may be
toned down to a proposal of inseparable but ideal and platonic friendship. Some
women understand how to sublimate the transference, how to modify it until it
attains a kind of fitness for existence; others manifest it in its original, crude
and generally impossible form. But fundamentally it is always the same and
can never conceal that its origin is derived from the same source.
Before we ask ourselves how we can accommodate this new fact, we must
first complete its description. What happens in the case of male patients? Here
we might hope to escape the troublesome infusion of sex difference and sex
attraction. But the answer is pretty much the same as with women patients. The
same relation to the physician, the same over-estimation of his qualities, the
same abandon of interest toward his affairs, the same jealousy toward all those
who are close to him. The sublimated forms of transference are more frequent
in men, the direct sexual demand is rarer to the extent to which manifest
homosexuality retreats before the methods by which these instinct components
may be utilized. In his male patients more often than in his women patients, the
physician observes a manifestation of transference which at first sight seems to
contradict everything previously described: a hostile or negative transference.
In the first place, let us realize that the transference occurs in the patient at
the very outset of the treatment and is, for a time, the strongest impetus to
work. We do not feel it and need not heed it as long as it acts to the advantage
of the analysis we are working out together. When it turns into resistance,
however, we must pay attention to it. Then we discover that two contrasting
conditions have changed their relation to the treatment. In the first place there is
the development of an affectionate inclination, clearly revealing the signs of its
origin in sexual desire which becomes so strong as to awaken an inner
resistance against it. Secondly, there are the hostile instead of the tender
impulses. The hostile feelings generally appear later than the affectionate
impulses or succeed them. When they occur simultaneously they exemplify the
ambivalence of emotions which exists in most of the intimate relations between
all persons. The hostile feelings connote an emotional attachment just as do the
affectionate impulses, just as defiance signifies dependence as well as does
obedience, although the activities they call out are opposed. We cannot doubt
but that the hostile feelings toward the physician deserve the name of
transference, since the situation which the treatment creates certainly could not
give sufficient cause for their origin. This necessary interpretation of negative
transference assures us that we have not mistaken the positive or affectionate
emotions that we have similarly named.
The origin of this transference, the difficulties it causes us, the means of
overcoming it, the use we finally extract from it—these matters must be dealt
with in the technical instruction of psychoanalysis, and can only be touched
upon here. It is out of the question to yield to those demands of the patient
which take root from the transference, while it would be unkind to reject them
brusquely or even indignantly. We overcome transference by proving to the
patient that his feelings do not originate in the present situation, and are not
intended for the person of the physician, but merely repeat what happened to
him at some former time. In this way we force him to transform his repetition
into a recollection. And so transference, which whether it be hostile or
affectionate, seems in every case to be the greatest menace of the cure, really
becomes its most effectual tool, which aids in opening the locked
compartments of the psychic life. But I should like to tell you something which
will help you to overcome the astonishment you must feel at this unexpected
phenomenon. We must not forget that this illness of the patient which we have
undertaken to analyze is not consummated or, as it were, congealed; rather it is
something that continues its development like a living being. The beginning of
the treatment does not end this development. When the cure, however, first has
taken possession of the patient, the productivity of the illness in this new phase
is concentrated entirely on one aspect: the relation of the patient to the
physician. And so transference may be compared to the cambrium layer
between the wood and the bark of a tree, from which the formation of new
tissues and the growth of the trunk proceed at the same time. When the
transference has once attained this significance the work upon the recollections
of the patient recedes into the background. At that point it is correct to say that
we are no longer concerned with the patient's former illness, but with a newly
created, transformed neurosis, in place of the former. We followed up this new
edition of an old condition from the very beginning, we saw it originate and
grow; hence we understand it especially well, because we ourselves are the
center of it, its object. All the symptoms of the patient have lost their original
meaning and have adapted themselves to a new meaning, which is determined
by its relation to transference. Or, only such symptoms as are capable of this
transformation have persisted. The control of this new, artificial neurosis
coincides with the removal of the illness for which treatment was sought in the
first place, namely, with the solution of our therapeutic problem. The human
being who, by means of his relations to the physician, has freed himself from
the influences of suppressed impulses, becomes and stays free in his individual
life, when the influence of the physician is subsequently removed.
Transference has attained extraordinary significance, has become the centre
of the cure, in the conditions of hysteria, anxiety and compulsion neuroses.
Their conditions therefore are properly included under the term transference
neuroses. Whoever in his analytic experience has come into contact with the
existence of transference can no longer doubt the character of those suppressed
impulses that express themselves in the symptoms of these neuroses and
requires no stronger proof of their libidinous character. We may say that our
conviction that the meaning of the symptoms is substituted libidinous
gratification was finally confirmed by this explanation of transference.
Now we have every reason to correct our former dynamic conception of the
healing process, and to bring it into harmony with our new discernment. If the
patient is to fight the normal conflict that our analysis has revealed against the
suppressions, he requires a tremendous impetus to influence the desirable
decision which will lead him back to health. Otherwise he might decide for a
repetition of the former issue and allow those factors which have been admitted
to consciousness to slip back again into suppression. The deciding vote in this
conflict is not given by his intellectual penetration—which is neither strong nor
free enough for such an achievement—but only by his relation to the physician.
Inasmuch as his transference carries a positive sign, it invests the physician
with authority and is converted into faith for his communications and
conceptions. Without transference of this sort, or without a negative transfer, he
would not even listen to the physician and to his arguments. Faith repeats the
history of its own origin; it is a derivative of love and at first requires no
arguments. When they are offered by a beloved person, arguments may later be
admitted and subjected to critical reflection. Arguments without such support
avail nothing, and never mean anything in life to most persons. Man's intellect
is accessible only in so far as he is capable of libidinous occupation with an
object, and accordingly we have good ground to recognize and to fear the limit
of the patient's capacity for being influenced by even the best analytical
technique, namely, the extent of his narcism.
The capacity for directing libidinous occupation with objects towards persons
as well must also be accorded to all normal persons. The inclination to
transference on the part of the neurotic we have mentioned, is only an
extraordinary heightening of this common characteristic. It would be strange
indeed if a human trait so wide-spread and significant had never been noticed
and turned to account. But that has been done. Bernheim, with unerring
perspicacity, based his theory of hypnotic manifestations on the statement that
all persons are open to suggestion in some way or other. Suggestibility in his
sense is nothing more than an inclination to transference, bounded so narrowly
that there is no room for any negative transfer. But Bernheim could never
define suggestion or its origin. For him it was a fundamental fact, and he could
never tell us anything regarding its origin. He did not recognize the dependence
of suggestibility upon sexuality and the activity of the libido. We, on the other
hand, must realize that we have excluded hypnosis from our technique of
neurosis only to rediscover suggestion in the shape of transference.
But now I shall pause and let you put in a word. I see that an objection is
looming so large within you that if it were not voiced you would be unable to
listen to me. "So at last you confess that like the hypnotists, you work with the
aid of suggestion. That is what we have been thinking for a long time. But why
choose the detour over reminiscences of the past, revealing of the unconscious,
interpretation and retranslation of distortions, the tremendous expenditure of
time and money, if the only efficacious thing is suggestion? Why do you not
use suggestion directly against symptoms, as the others do, the honest
hypnotists? And if, furthermore, you offer the excuse that by going your way
you have made numerous psychological discoveries which are not revealed by
direct suggestion, who shall vouch for their accuracy? Are not they, too, a
result of suggestion, that is to say, of unintentional suggestion? Can you not, in
this realm also, thrust upon the patient whatever you wish and whatever you
think is so?"
Your objections are uncommonly interesting, and must be answered. But I
cannot do it now for lack of time. Till the next time, then. You shall see, I shall
be accountable to you. Today I shall only end what I have begun. I promised to
explain, with the aid of the factor of transference, why our therapeutic efforts
have not met with success in narcistic neuroses.
This I can do in a few words and you will see how simply the riddle can be
solved, how well everything harmonizes. Observation shows that persons
suffering from narcistic neuroses have no capacity for transference, or only
insufficient remains of it. They reject the physician not with hostility, but with
indifference. That is why he cannot influence them. His words leave them cold,
make no impression, and so the mechanism of the healing process, which we
are able to set in motion elsewhere, the renewal of the pathogenic conflict and
the overcoming of the resistance to the suppression, cannot be reproduced in
them. They remain as they are. Frequently they are known to attempt a cure on
their own account, and pathological results have ensued. We are powerless
before them.
On the basis of our clinical impressions of these patients, we asserted that in
their case libidinous occupation with objects must have been abandoned, and
object-libido must have been transformed into ego-libido. On the strength of
this characteristic we had separated it from the first group of neurotics
(hysteria, anxiety and compulsion neuroses). Their behavior under attempts at
therapy confirms this supposition. They show no neurosis. They, therefore, are
inaccessible to our efforts and we cannot cure them.

TWENTY-EIGHTH LECTURE

GENERAL THEORY OF THE NEUROSES

Analytical Therapy

YOU know our subject for today. You asked me why we do not make use of
direct suggestion in psychoanalytic therapy, when we admit that our influence
depends substantially upon transference, i.e., suggestion, for you have come to
doubt whether or not we can answer for the objectivity of our psychological
discoveries in the face of such a predominance of suggestion. I promised to
give you a comprehensive answer.
Direct suggestion is suggestion directed against the expression of the
symptoms, a struggle between your authority and the motives of the disease.
You pay no attention during this process to the motives, but only demand of the
patient that he suppress their expression in symptoms. So it makes no
difference in principle whether you hypnotize the patient or not. Bernheim,
with his usual perspicacity, asserted that suggestion is the essential
phenomenon underlying hypnotism, that hypnotism itself is already a result of
suggestion, is a suggested condition. Bernheim was especially fond of
practising suggestion upon a person in the waking state, and could achieve the
same results as with suggestion under hypnosis.
What shall I deal with first, the evidence of experience or theoretic
considerations?
 Let us begin with our experiences. I was a pupil of Bernheim's, whom I
sought out in Nancy in 1889, and whose book on suggestion I translated into
German. For years I practised hypnotic treatment, at first by means of
prohibitory suggestions alone, and later by this method in combination with
investigation of the patient after the manner of Breuer. So I can speak from
experience about the results of hypnotic or suggestive therapy. If we judge
Bernheim's method according to the old doctor's password that an ideal therapy
must be rapid, reliable and not unpleasant for the patient, we find it fulfills at
least two of these requirements. It can be carried out much more rapidly,
indescribably more rapidly than the analytic method, and it brings the patient
neither trouble nor discomfort. In the long run it becomes monotonous for the
physician, since each case is exactly the same; continually forbidding the
existence of the most diverse symptoms under the same ceremonial, without
being able to grasp anything of their meaning or their significance. It is second-
rate work, not scientific activity, and reminiscent of magic, conjuring and
hocus-pocus; yet in the face of the interest of the patient this cannot be
considered. The third requisite, however, was lacking. The procedure was in no
way reliable. It might succeed in one case, and fail with the next; sometimes
much was accomplished, at other times little, one knew not why. Worse than
this capriciousness of the technique was the lack of permanency of the results.
After a short time, when the patient was again heard from, the old malady had
reappeared, or it had been replaced by a new malady. We could start in again to
hypnotize. At the same time we had been warned by those who were
experienced that by frequent repetitions of hypnotism we would deprive the
patient of his self-reliance and accustom him to this therapy as though it were a
narcotic. Granted that we did occasionally succeed as well as one could wish;
with slight trouble we achieved complete and permanent results. But the
conditions for such a favorable outcome remained unknown. I have had it
happen that an aggravated condition which I had succeeded in clearing up
completely by a short hypnotic treatment returned unchanged when the patient
became angry and arbitrarily developed ill feeling against me. After a
reconciliation I was able to remove the malady anew and with even greater
thoroughness, yet when she became hostile to me a second time it returned
again. Another time a patient whom I had repeatedly helped through nervous
conditions by hypnosis, during the treatment of an especially stubborn attack,
suddenly threw her arms around my neck. This made it necessary to consider
the question, whether one wanted to or not, of the nature and source of the
suggestive authority.
So much for experience. It shows us that in renouncing direct suggestion we
have given up nothing that is not replaceable. Now let us add a few further
considerations. The practice of hypnotic therapy demands only a slight amount
of work of the patient as well as of the physician. This therapy fits in perfectly
with the estimation of neuroses to which the majority of physicians subscribe.
The physician says to the neurotic, "There is nothing the matter with you; you
are only nervous, and so I can blow away all your difficulties with a few words
in a few minutes." But it is contrary to our dynamic conceptions that we should
be able to move a great weight by an inconsiderable force, by attacking it
directly and without the aid of appropriate preparations. So far as conditions are
comparable, experience shows us that this performance does not succeed with
the neurotic. But I know this argument is not unassailable; there are also
"redeeming features."
In the light of the knowledge we have gained from psychoanalysis we can
describe the difference between hypnotic and psychoanalytic suggestion as
follows: Hypnotic therapy seeks to hide something in psychic life, and to gloss
it over; analytic therapy seeks to lay it bare and to remove it. The first method
works cosmetically, the other surgically. The first uses suggestion in order to
prevent the appearance of the symptoms, it strengthens suppression, but leaves
unchanged all other processes that have led to symptom development. Analytic
therapy attacks the illness closer to its sources, namely in the conflicts out of
which the symptoms have emerged, it makes use of suggestion to change the
solution of these conflicts. Hypnotic therapy leaves the patient inactive and
unchanged, and therefore without resistance to every new occasion for disease.
Analytic treatment places upon the physician, as well as upon the patient, a
difficult responsibility; the inner resistance of the patient must be abolished.
The psychic life of the patient is permanently changed by overcoming these
resistances, it is lifted upon a higher plane of development and remains
protected against new possibilities of disease. The work of overcoming
resistance is the fundamental task of the analytic cure. The patient, however,
must take it on himself to accomplish this, while the physician, with the aid of
suggestion, makes it possible for him to do so. The suggestion works in the
nature of an education. We are therefore justified in saying that analytic
treatment is a sort of after-education.
I hope I have made it clear to you wherein our technique of using suggestion
differs therapeutically from the only use possible in hypnotic therapy. With
your knowledge of the relation between suggestion and transference you will
readily understand the capriciousness of hypnotic therapy which attracted our
attention, and you will see why, on the other hand, analytic suggestion can be
relied upon to its limits. In hypnosis we depend on the condition of the patient's
capacity for transference, yet we are unable to exert any influence on this
capacity. The transference of the subject may be negative, or, as is most
frequent, ambivalent; the patient may have protected himself against suggestion
by very special adjustments, yet we are unable to learn anything concerning
them. In psychoanalysis we work with the transference itself, we do away with
the forces opposing it, prepare the instrument with which we are to work. So it
becomes possible to derive entirely new uses from the power of suggestion; we
are able to control it, the patient does not work himself into any state of mind
he pleases, but in so far as we are able to influence him at all, we can guide the
suggestion.
Now you will say, regardless of whether we call the driving force of our
analysis transference or suggestion, there is still the danger that through our
influence on the patient the objective certainty of our discoveries becomes
doubtful. That which becomes a benefit to therapy works harm to the
investigation. This objection is most often raised against psychoanalysis, and it
must be admitted that even if it does not hit the mark, it cannot be waved aside
as stupid. But if it were justified, psychoanalysis would be nothing more than
an extraordinarily well disguised and especially workable kind of treatment by
suggestion, and we may lay little weight upon all its assertions concerning the
influences of life, psychic dynamics, and the unconscious. This is in fact the
opinion held by our opponents; we are supposed especially to have "balked
into" the patients everything that supports the importance of sexual
experiences, and often the experiences themselves, after the combinations
themselves have grown up in our degenerate imaginations. We can refute these
attacks most easily by calling on the evidence of experience rather than by
resorting to theory. Anyone who has himself performed a psychoanalysis has
been able to convince himself innumerable times that it is impossible thus to
suggest anything to the patient. There is no difficulty, of course, in making the
patient a disciple of any one theory, and thus causing him to share the possible
error of the physician. With respect to this he behaves just like any other
person, like a student, but he has influenced only his intelligence, not his
disease. The solving of his conflicts and the overcoming of his resistances
succeeds only if we have aroused in him representations of such expectations as
can agree with reality. What was inapplicable in the assumptions of the
physician falls away during the course of the analysis; it must be withdrawn
and replaced by something more nearly correct. By employing a careful
technique we seek to prevent the occurrence of temporary results arising out of
suggestion, yet there is no harm if such temporary results occur, for we are
never satisfied with early successes. We do not consider the analysis finished
until all the obscurities of the case are cleared up, all amnestic gaps filled out
and the occasions which originally called out the suppressions discovered. We
see in results that are achieved too quickly a hindrance rather than a furtherance
of analytic work and repeatedly we undo these results again by purposely
breaking up the transference upon which they rest. Fundamentally it is this
feature which distinguishes analytical treatment from the purely suggestive
technique and frees analytic results from the suspicion of having been
suggested. Under every other suggestive treatment the transference itself is
most carefully upheld and the influence left unquestioned; in analytic
treatment, however, the transference becomes the subject of treatment and is
subject to criticism in whatever form it may appear. At the end of an analytic
cure the transference itself must be abolished; therefore the effect of the
treatment, whether positive or negative, must be founded not upon suggestion
but upon the overcoming of inner resistances, upon the inner change achieved
in the patient, which the aid of suggestion has made possible.
Presumably the creation of the separate suggestions is counteracted, in the
course of the cure, by our being continually forced to attack resistances which
have the ability to change themselves into negative (hostile) transferences.
Furthermore, let me call your attention to the fact that a large number of results
of analysis, otherwise perhaps subject to the suspicion that they are products of
suggestion, can be confirmed from other unquestionable sources. As
authoritative witnesses in this case we refer to the testimony of dements and
paranoiacs, who are, naturally far removed from any suspicion of suggestive
influence. Whatever these patients can tell us about symbolic translations and
phantasies which have forced their way into their consciousness agrees
faithfully with the results of our investigations upon the unconscious of
transference-neurotics, and this gives added weight to the objective correctness
of our interpretations which are so often doubted. I believe you will not go
wrong if you give your confidence to analysis with reference to these factors.
We now want to complete our statement concerning the mechanism of
healing, by including it within the formulae of the libido theory. The neurotic is
incapable both of enjoyment and work; first, because his libido is not directed
toward any real object, and second because he must use up a great deal of his
former energy to keep his libido suppressed and to arm himself against its
attacks. He would become well if there could be an end to the conflict between
his ego and his libido, and if his ego could again have the libido at its disposal.
The task of therapy, therefore, consists of freeing the libido from its present
bonds, which have estranged it from the ego, and furthermore to bring it once
more into the service of the ego. Where is the libido of the neurotics? It is easy
to find; it is bound to the symptoms which at that time furnish it with the only
available substitute satisfaction. We have to become master of the symptoms,
and abolish them, which is of course exactly what the patient asks us to do. To
abolish the symptoms it becomes necessary to go back to their origin, to renew
the conflict out of which they emerged, but this time with the help of motive
forces that were originally not available, to guide it toward a new solution. This
revision of the process of suppression can be accomplished only in part by
following the traces in memory of the occurrences which led to the
suppression. The decisive part of the cure is accomplished by means of the
relationship to the physician, the transference, by means of which new editions
of the old conflict are created. Under this situation the patient would like to
behave as he had behaved originally, but by summoning all his available
psychic power we compel him to reach a different decision. Transference, then,
becomes the battlefield on which all the contending forces are to meet.
The full strength of the libido, as well as the entire resistance against it, is
concentrated in this relationship to the physician; so it is inevitable that the
symptoms of the libido should be laid bare. In place of his original disturbance
the patient manifests the artificially constructed disturbance of transference; in
place of heterogeneous unreal objects for the libido you now have only the
person of the physician, a single object, which, however, is also fantastic. The
new struggle over this object is, however, raised to the highest psychic level
with the aid of the physician's suggestions, and proceeds as a normal psychic
conflict. By avoiding a new suppression the estrangement between the ego and
the libido comes to an end, the psychic unity of the personality is restored.
When the libido again becomes detached from the temporary object of the
physician it cannot return to its former objects, but is now at the disposal of the
ego. The forces we have overcome in the task of therapy are on the one hand
the aversion of the ego for certain directions of the libido, which had expressed
itself as a tendency to suppression, and on the other hand the tenacity of the
libido, which is loathe to leave an object which it has once occupied.
Accordingly the work of therapy falls into two phases: first, all the libido is
forced from the symptoms into the transference, and concentrated there;
secondly, the struggle over this new object is carried on and the libido set free.
The decisive change for the better in this renewed conflict is the throwing out
of the suppression, so that the libido cannot this time again escape the ego by
fleeing into the unconscious. This is accomplished by the change in the ego
under the influence of the physician's suggestion. In the course of the work of
interpretation, which translates unconscious into conscious, the ego grows at
the expense of the unconscious; it learns forgiveness toward the libido, and
becomes inclined to permit some sort of satisfaction for it. The ego's timidity in
the face of the demands of the libido is now lessened by the prospect of
occupying some of the libido through sublimation. The more the processes of
the treatment correspond to this theoretic description the greater will be the
success of psychoanalytic therapy. It is limited by the lack of mobility of the
libido, which can stand in the way of releasing its objects, and by the obstinate
narcism which will not permit the object-transference to effect more than just
so much. Perhaps we shall obtain further light on the dynamics of the healing
process by the remark that we are able to gather up the entire libido which has
become withdrawn from the control of the ego by drawing a part of it to
ourselves in the process of transference.
It is to be remembered that we cannot reach a direct conclusion as to the
disposition of the libido during the disease from the distributions of the libido
which are effected during and because of the treatment. Assuming that we have
succeeded in curing the case by means of the creation and destruction of a
strong father-transference to the physician, it would be wrong to conclude that
the patient had previously suffered from a similar and unconscious attachment
of his libido to his father. The father-transference is merely the battlefield upon
which we were able to overcome the libido; the patient's libido had been
concentrated here from its other positions. The battlefield need not necessarily
have coincided with the most important fortresses of the enemy. Defense of the
hostile capital need not take place before its very gates. Not until we have again
destroyed the transference can we begin to reconstruct the distribution of the
libido that existed during the illness.
From the standpoint of the libido theory we might say a last word in regard to
the dream. The dreams of neurotics, as well as their errors and haphazard
thoughts, help us in finding the meaning of the symptoms and in discovering
the disposition of the libido. In the form of the wish fulfillment they show us
what wish impulses have been suppressed, and to what objects the libido,
withdrawn from the ego, has been attached. That is why interpretation of
dreams plays a large role in psychoanalytic treatment, and is in many cases, for
a long time, the most important means with which we work. We already know
that the condition of sleep itself carries with it a certain abatement of
suppressions. Because of this lessening of the pressure upon it, it becomes
possible for the suppressed impulse to create in the dream a much clearer
expression than the symptom can furnish during the day. So dream-study is the
easiest approach to a knowledge of the libidinous suppressed unconscious
which has been withdrawn from the ego.
Dreams of neurotics differ in no essential point from the dreams of normal
persons; you might even say they cannot be distinguished. It would be
unreasonable to explain the dreams of the nervous in any way which could not
be applied to the dreams of the normal. So we must say the difference between
neurosis and health applies only during the day, and does not continue in dream
life. We find it necessary to attribute to the healthy numerous assumptions
which have grown out of the connections between the dreams and the
symptoms of the neurotic. We are not in a position to deny that even a healthy
man possesses those factors in his psychic life which alone make possible the
development of the dream and of the symptom as well. We must conclude,
therefore, that the healthy have also made use of suppressions and are put to a
certain amount of trouble to keep those impulses under control; the system of
their unconscious, too, conceals impulses which are suppressed, yet are still
possessed of energy, and a part of their libido is also withdrawn from the
control of their ego. So the healthy man is virtually a neurotic, but dreams are
apparently the only symptoms which he can manifest. Yet if we subject our
waking hours to a more penetrating analysis we discover, of course, that they
refute this appearance and that this seemingly healthy life is shot through with a
number of trivial, practically unimportant symptom formations.
The difference between nervous health and neurosis is entirely a practical
one which is determined by the available capacity for enjoyment and
accomplishment retained by the individual. It varies presumably with the
relative proportion of the energy totals which have remained free and those
which have been bound by suppressions, and is quantitative rather than
qualitative. I do not have to remind you that this conception is the theoretical
basis for the certainty that neuroses can be cured, despite their foundation in
constitutional disposition.
This is accordingly what we may make out of the identity between the
dreams of the healthy and those of the neurotic for the definition of health. As
regards the dream itself, we must note further that we cannot separate it from
its relation to neurotic symptoms. We must recognize that it is not completely
defined as a translation of thoughts into an archaic form of expression, that is,
we must assume it discloses a disposition of libido and of object-occupations
which have actually taken place.
We have about come to the end. Perhaps you are disappointed that I have
dealt only with theory in this chapter on psychoanalytic therapy, and have said
nothing concerning the conditions under which the cure is undertaken, or of the
successes which it achieves. But I shall omit both. I shall omit the first because
I had intended no practical training in the practice of psychoanalysis, and I shall
neglect the second for numerous reasons. At the beginning of our talks I
emphasized the fact that under favorable circumstances we attain results which
can be favorably compared with the happiest achievements in the field of
internal therapy, and, I may add, these results could not have been otherwise
achieved. If I were to say more I might be suspected of wishing to drown the
voices of disparagement, which have become so loud, by advertising our
claims. We psychoanalysts have repeatedly been threatened by our medical
colleagues, even in open congresses, that the eyes of the suffering public must
be opened to the worthlessness of this method of treatment by a statistical
collection of analytic failures and injuries. But such a collection, aside from the
biased, denunciatory character of its purpose, would hardly be able to give a
correct picture of the therapeutic values of analysis. Analytic therapy is, as you
know, still young; it took a long time to establish the technique, and this could
be done only during the course of the work and under the influence of
accumulating experience. As a result of the difficulties of instruction the
physician who begins the practice of psychoanalysis is more dependent upon
his capacity to develop on his own account than is the ordinary specialist, and
the results he achieves in his first years can never be taken as indicative of the
possibilities of analytic therapy.
Many attempts at treatment failed in the early years of analysis because they
were made on cases that were not at all suited to the procedure, and which
today we exclude by our classification of symptoms. But this classification
could be made only after practice. In the beginning we did not know that
paranoia and dementia praecox are, in their fully developed phases,
inaccessible, and we were justified in trying out our method on all kinds of
conditions. Besides, the greatest number of failures in those first years were not
due to the fault of the physician or because of unsuitable choice of subjects, but
rather to the unpropitiousness of external conditions. We have hitherto spoken
only of internal resistances, those of the patient, which are necessary and may
be overcome. External resistances to psychoanalysis, due to the circumstances
of the patient and his environment, have little theoretical interest, but are of
great practical importance. Psychoanalytic treatment may be compared to a
surgical operation, and has the right to be undertaken under circumstances
favorable to its success. You know what precautions the surgeon is accustomed
to take: a suitable room, good light, assistance, exclusion of relatives, etc. How
many operations would be successful, do you think, if they had to be performed
in the presence of all the members of the family, who would put their fingers
into the field of operation and cry aloud at every cut of the knife? The
interference of relatives in psychoanalytical treatment is a very great danger, a
danger one does not know how to meet. We are armed against the internal
resistances of the patient which we recognize as necessary, but how are we to
protect ourselves against external resistance? It is impossible to approach the
relatives of the patient with any sort of explanation, one cannot influence them
to hold aloof from the whole affair, and one cannot get into league with them
because we then run the danger of losing the confidence of the patient, who
rightly demands that we in whom he confides take his part. Besides, those who
know the rifts that are often formed in family life will not be surprised as
analysts when they discover that the patient's nearest relatives are less
interested in seeing him cured than in having him remain as he is. Where, as is
so often the case, the neurosis is connected with conflicts with members of the
family, the healthy member does not hesitate long in the choice between his
own interest and that of the cure of the patient. It is not surprising if a husband
looks with disfavor upon a treatment in which, as he may correctly suspect, the
register of his sins is unrolled; nor are we surprised, and surely we cannot take
the blame, when our efforts remain fruitless and are prematurely broken off
because the resistance of the husband is added to that of the sick wife. We had
only undertaken something which, under the existing circumstance, it was
impossible to carry out.
Instead of many cases, I shall tell you of just one in which, because of
professional precautions, I was destined to play a sad role. Many years ago I
treated a young girl who for a long time was afraid to go on the street, or to
remain at home alone. The patient hesitatingly admitted that her phantasy had
been caused by accidentally observing affectionate relations between her
mother and a well-to-do friend of the family. But she was so clumsy—or
perhaps so sly—as to give her mother a hint of what had been discussed during
the analysis, and changed her behavior toward her mother, insisting that no one
but her mother should protect her against the fear of being alone, and anxiously
barring the way when her mother wished to leave the house. The mother had
previously been very nervous herself, but had been cured years before in a
hydropathic sanatorium. Let us say, in that institution she made the
acquaintance of the man with whom she was to enter upon the relationship
which was able to satisfy her in every respect. Becoming suspicious of the
stormy demands of the girl, the mother suddenly realized the meaning of her
daughter's fear. She must have made herself sick to imprison her mother and to
rob her of the freedom she needed to maintain relations with her lover.
Immediately the mother made an end to the harmful treatment. The girl was put
into a sanatorium for the nervous and exhibited for many years as "a poor
victim of psychoanalysis." For just as long a period I was pursued by evil
slander, due to the unfavorable outcome of this case. I maintained silence
because I thought myself bound by the rules of professional discretion. Years
later I learned from a colleague who had visited the institution, and had seen
the agoraphobic girl there, that the relationship between the mother and the
wealthy friend of the family was known all over town, and apparently connived
at by the husband and father. It was to this "secret" that our treatment had been
sacrificed.
In the years before the war, when the influx of patients from all parts made
me independent of the favor or disfavor of my native city, I followed the rule of
not treating anyone who was not sui juris, was not independent of all other
persons in his essential relations of life. Every psychoanalyst cannot do this.
You may conclude from my warning against the relatives of patients that for
purposes of psychoanalysis we should take the patients away from their
families, and should limit this therapy to the inmates of sanatoriums. I should
not agree with you in this; it is much more beneficial for the patients, if they are
not in a stage of great exhaustion, to continue in the same circumstances under
which they must master the tasks set for them during the treatment. But the
relatives ought not to counteract this advantage by their behavior, and above
all, they should not antagonize and oppose the endeavors of the physician. But
how are we to contend against these influences which are so inaccessible to us!
You see how much the prospects of a treatment are determined by the social
surroundings and the cultural conditions of a family.
This offers a sad outlook indeed for the effectiveness of psychoanalysis as a
therapy, even if we can explain the great majority of our failures by putting the
blame on such disturbing external factors! Friends of analysis have advised us
to counterbalance such a collection of failures by means of a statistical
compilation on our part of our successful cases. Yet I could not try myself to do
this. I tried to explain that statistics would be worthless if the collected cases
were not comparable, and in fact, the various neuroses which we have
undertaken to treat could, as a matter of fact, hardly be compared on the same
basis, since they differed in many fundamental respects. Besides, the period of
time over which we could report was too short to permit us to judge the
permanency of our cures, and concerning certain cases we could not have given
any information whatever. They related to persons who had kept their ailments,
as well as their treatment, secret, and whose cure must necessarily be kept
secret as well. The strongest hindrance, however, lay in the knowledge that
men behave most irrationally in matters of therapy, and that we have no
prospect of attaining anything by an appeal to reason. A therapeutic novelty is
received either with frenzied enthusiasm, as was the case when Koch first made
public his tuberculin against tuberculosis, or it is treated with abysmal distrust,
as was the really blessed vaccination of Jenner, which even today retains
implacable opponents. There was a very obvious prejudice against
psychoanalysis. When we had cured a very difficult case we would hear it said:
"That is no proof, he would have become well by himself in all this time." Yet
when a patient who had already gone through four cycles of depression and
mania came into my care during a temporary cessation in the melancholia, and
three weeks later found herself in the beginnings of a new attack, all the
members of the family as well as the high medical authorities called into
consultation, were convinced that the new attack could only be the result of the
attempted analysis. Against prejudice we are powerless; you see it again in the
prejudices that one group of warring nations has developed against the other.
The most sensible thing for us to do is to wait and allow time to wear it away.
Some day the same persons think quite differently about the same things than
before. Why they formerly thought otherwise remains the dark secret.
It may be possible that the prejudice against psychoanalysis is already on the
wane. The continual spread of psychoanalytic doctrine, the increase of the
number of physicians in many lands who treat analytically, seems to vouch for
it. When I was a young physician I was caught in just such a storm of outraged
feeling of the medical profession toward hypnosis, treatment by suggestion,
which today is contrasted with psychoanalysis by "sober" men. Hypnotism did
not, however, as a therapeutic agent, live up to its promises; we psychoanalysts
may call ourselves its rightful heirs, and we have not forgotten the large amount
of encouragement and theoretical explanation we owe to it. The injuries blamed
upon psychoanalysis are limited essentially to temporary aggravation of the
conflict when the analysis is clumsily handled, or when it is broken off
unfinished. You have heard our justification for our form of treatment, and you
can form your own opinion as to whether or not our endeavors are likely to lead
to lasting injury. Misuse of psychoanalysis is possible in various ways; above
all, transference is a dangerous remedy in the hands of an unconscientious
physician. But no professional method of procedure is protected from misuse; a
knife that is not sharp is of no use in effecting a cure.
I have thus reached the end, ladies and gentlemen. It is more than the
customary formal speech when I admit that I am myself keenly depressed over
the many faults in the lectures I have just delivered. First of all, I am sorry that
I have so often promised to return to a subject only slightly touched upon at the
time, and then found that the context has not made it possible to keep my word.
I have undertaken to inform you concerning an unfinished thing, still in the
process of development, and my brief exposition itself was an incomplete
thing. Often I presented the evidence and then did not myself draw the
conclusion. But I could not endeavor to make you masters of the subject. I tried
only to give you some explanation and stimulation.

END

INDEX

A, B, C, D, E, F, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, R, S, T, U, V, W, Z
Abel, C., 195
Abel, R., 148
Abraham, K., 284, 358
Abstinence, 299
Accidental and symptomatic acts, 42
Accumulated and combined errors, 37
Adler, A., 203, 330, 351
Agoraphobia, 227, 233
Alexander, dream of, 65
Altruism, 360
Ambivalence, 369
Amnesia, 244;
childhood, 168;
hysterical, 245;
infantile, 245;
of the neurotic, 244
Analyses of dreams, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 153
Analysis, experimental, dream for, 93
Analytical therapy, 372, 388
Andreas, Lou, 272
Anxiety, 340, 342;
dream, 183;
equivalents, 347;
form of neurotic fear, 346;
hysteria, 233, 259, 316, 346;
hysteria, resistance in, 250;
neurosis, 338, 344, 347
Anxious expectation, 344
Archaic remnants and infantilism in the dream, 167
Art, and the neurosis, 326
Association experiment, 86;
free, 84
Auto-eroticism, 359

Back, George, 108
Basedowi, M., 336
Beheading symbol, 231
Bernheim, 81, 240, 385, 388
Binet, 302
Binz, 66
Birth of the hero, myths, 182
Birth, the source of fear, 343;
symbols of, 132;
theories of children, 274
Bleuler, 86, 369
Bloch, Ivan, 265
Bölsche, W., 307
Breuer, J., 221, 232, 241, 242, 253, 254, 388
Breughel, P., 263
Castration complex, 175
Censor, dream, 110
Charcot, 119
Child, sexual life of, 268, 281
Childhood amnesia, 168;
dreams of, 101;
egoism in, 171;
experiences, phantasy in, 319;
loss of memory for, 168;
prophylaxis, 317
Children, fear in, 350;
sexual curiosity of, 274
Children's dreams, 102;
theories of birth, 274
Choice of an object, 368
Clinical problem, 244
Common elements of dreams, 67, 69, 75
Complex, castration, 175;
family, 285;
Oedipus, 174, 285;
parent, 289
Compulsion neurosis, 222, 227, 259, 261, 267, 298, 326;
fear in, 349;
manifestations of, 222
Compulsion neurotics, resistance in, 250, 251;
symptoms, analysis of, 224
Compulsive activity, meaning of, 239;
acts, 223;
washing as, 233
Condensation, 142
Conflict, role of, in neurosis, 302, 305
Conscious, definition of, 90
Conversion-hysteria, 259, 339
Criticism of dream, 194;
of psychoanalysis, reasons for, 246

Darwin, Charles, 247, 345
Day dreams, 76, 105, 324
Death in dreams, 133;
wishes, 169
Definition of psychoanalysis, 1
Delusion, 216
Dementia praecox, 339, 358, 363
Development and regression, theories of, 294
Diderot, 292
Difficulties of psychoanalysis, 2, 5
Disease, secondary advantage of, 334
Disguise-memories, 168
Displacement, 114, 144
Dream, the, 63;
of Alexander, 65;
anxiety, 183;
approaches to study of, 82;
archaic remnants and infantilism in the, 167;
censor, 110;
character of, 69;
criticism of, 194;
day, 76, 105;
definition of, 67, 68;
difficulties and preliminary approach to, 63;
distortion in, 101, 110, 183;
doubtful points concerning, 194;
for experimental analysis, 93;
hypothesis and technique of interpretation of, 78;
infantile, 183;
interpretation, rules to be observed in, 91, 92;
manifest and latent content of, 90, 96;
of a prisoner, 109;
the reaction to sleep-disturbing stimuli, 70;
stimuli in, 71, 73;
symbolism in, 122
Dreams analysed, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 153;
of childhood, 101;
children's, 102;
children's, elements of, 101-5;
common elements of, 67, 69, 75;
death in, 133;
elaboration in, 74;
examples of, 111;
experimentally induced in, 71;
of neurotics, 395;
typical, 234;
visual forms in, 75;
wish fulfillment, 107;
dream-work, 141;
processes of, 142
Du prel, 108

Ego, development of, 304;

impulses, 303;
instincts, 356;
psychology, 365;
regressions, 310
Egoism, 360;
in childhood, 171
Elements of children's dreams, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105
Erogenous zones, 271
Erotomania, 366
Errors, accumulated and combined, 37;
forgetting names, 34;
forgetting projects, 34;
losing and mislaying objects, 36;
misreading, 51;
proved by further developments, 39;
psychology of, 10, 23;
repeated, 37;
slips of the pen, 49;
of the tongue, 16, 18;
expectant fear, 344

Fact, principle of, 309

Family-complex, 289
Fear, 340, 342;
in children, 350;
in compulsion neurosis, 349;
expectant, 344;
in hysteria, 348;
of the manifold, 344;
neurotic, 341;
anxiety, form of, 346;
clinical observations on, 347;
origin of, 350;
and real fear, connection between, 350;
real, 341;
and neurotic fear, connection between, 350
Fechner, G. T., 69
Federn, P., 127
Ferenczi, 304
Fetichism, 302
Fetichists, 264
Fixation of the instinct, 295;
traumatic, 236
Flaubert, G., 263
Fliess, W., 277
Fontaine, Th., 324
Fore-conscious, 256
Forgetting, defense against unpleasant recollections, 56;
impressions and experiences, 56;
names, 34, 55;
plans, 52;
projects, 34;
proper names, 87
Free association, 84;
name analysis by, 85
Free-floating fear, 344
Fright, 342

Hall, Stanley, 344, 355
Hildebrand, 71
Hoffman, 321
Homosexualists, 266
Homosexuality, 263
Hypnosis, 253, 386;
psycho-therapy by, 253
Hypnotic and psychoanalytic suggestion, difference between, 390
Hypnotism, 81, 388
Hypochondria, 338, 339, 362
Hysteria, 233, 245, 246, 261, 266, 297;
anxiety, 233, 316;
conversion, 339;
fear in, 348
Hysterical amnesias, 245;
backache, 339;
headache, 339;
identification, 369;
vomiting, 233

Illness as a defense, 332
Imago, 139
Incest, 176, 290
Infantile amnesias, 245;
dream, 183;
fear, 353;
neurosis, 316;
sexuality, 272, 279
Infantilism in the dream, archaic remnants and, 167
Inferiority, 351
Inhibition, 294
Instinct, fixation of, 295
Intellectual resistances, 251
Introversion, 325
Inversions, 149, 263

James-Lange theory of emotion, 343

Janet, P., 221
Jealousy, obsession of, 216
Jenner, 400
Jung, C. J., 86, 232, 325, 357

Koch, 400
Krauss, F. S., 134

Latent dream content, 90, 98

Leuret, 221
Levy, L., 133
Libido, 116, 270;
development of, 277, 282;
fixation, 300;
regressions of, 297;
theory, the, 356
Lichtenberg, 27
Lindner, 271
Losing and mislaying objects, 36, 57
Loss of memory for childhood, 168
Maeder, A., 39, 202
Mania of persecution, 366;
of jealousy, 366
Manifest dream content, 90, 96
Masochists, 264
Maury, 66, 71
Mayer, 16
Mechanism of the tongue slip, 46
Megalomania, 366
Melancholia, 369
Memory gaps, 244;
loss of, for childhood, 168
Meringer, 16
Misreading, 51
Mistakes, general observations on, 57
Myths, birth of the hero, 132

Name analysis by free association, 85

Naecke, P., 359
Narcism, 359, 360
Narcistic identification, 369;
neuroses, 298, 365;
and transference, 386
Negative transference, 383
Nervousness, fear and, 340;
ordinary, 328
Nestroy, 305
Neurasthenia, 338, 339
Neurosis, anxiety, 344;
art and, 326;
common experiences in history of, 321;
compulsion, 222;
determining factor in, 321;
development of symptoms of, 311;
etiology of, 296;
general theory of, 294;
infantile, 316;
narcistic, 298;
schematic representation of cause of, 315;
spontaneous, 237;
symptoms of, 317;
traumatic, 237;
true, difference between the symptoms of, and the psychoneurosis, 336
Neurotic fear, anxiety form of, 346;
clinical observations on, 347;
manifestations of, 344;
origin of, 350;
and real fear, connection between, 350
Neurotic manifestations, psychoanalytic conception of, 211;
symptoms, evolution of, 244;
meaning of, 221;
objections to interpretations of, 260
Neurotics, dreams of, 395
Nordenskjold, Otto, 107

Oberländer, 334
Object, choice of, 368
Obsession of jealousy, 216
Oedipus complex, 174, 285
Onanism, 272, 274
Organic pleasure, 280

Paranoia, 266, 339, 366
Paraphrenia, 339, 366
Parent-complex, 289
Pathological ritual, 228
Patricide, 290
Perverse, 263;
sexuality, 268, 279
Perversions, sex, 175, 278
Pfister, 199
Phantasies, primal, 323
Phantasy in childhood experiences, 319;
in children, 322
Phobias, 344;
analysis of, 353;
situation, in children, 352
Pleasure, principle of, 309
Pleasure-striving, 116
Pre-genital sexual organization, 283
Primal phantasies, 323
Principle of fact, 309;
of pleasure, 309
Psychiatry, psychoanalysis and, 209;
therapeutics of, 220
Psychic flight from unpleasantness, 55;
process, meaning of, 23;
definition of, 7;
in sleeping and waking, differences between, 69
Psychoanalysis, definition of, 1;
difficulties of, 2, 5;
and psychiatry, 209;
purpose of, 6;
reasons for criticism of, 246;
therapeutics of, 220
Psychoanalytic conception of neurotic manifestations, 211;
suggestion, hypnotic and difference between, 390
Psychology of errors, 10
Psychoneurosis, difference between the symptoms of the true neurosis
and, 336;
true neurosis and, connection between symptoms of, 338
Psychotherapy by hypnosis, 253
Purpose of psychoanalysis, 6

Rank, O., 21, 108, 132, 139, 154, 175, 292
Reaction-formations, 326
Regression, 295, 296;
of Libido, 297;
theories of development and, 294
Reik, Th., 290
Repression, 255
Reproduction, 269;
sexuality and, 277
Resistance, 92, 248;
in anxiety hysteria, 250;
in compulsion neurotics, 250, 251;
external, 398;
forms taken by, 250;
internal, 398;
intellectual, 251;
in narcistic neurosis, 365
Ritual, pathological, 228;
sleep, 227
Roux, 314

Sachs, Hanns, 139, 173
Sadistico-anal sexual organization, 283
Sadists, 264
Scherner, K. A., 124
Schirmer, 74
Schwind, 109
Secondary treatment, 151
Sex symbols, 126
Sex, the third, 263
Sexual curiosity of children, 274;
definition of concept, 262;
development, 284;
instincts, 356;
life of the child, 268, 281;
life of man, 262;
organizations, 277, 283;
perversions, 175, 278
Sexuality, perverse, 268;
and reproduction, 277
Siebault, 81
Silberer, V., 203
Situation-phobia, 345;
phobias in children, 352
Sleep, definition of, 67;
ritual, 227
Slips of the tongue, 16;
effects of, 18;
explanation of, 25, 46;
general observations on, 48;
of the pen, 49
Sperber, H., 138
Spontaneous neuroses, 237
Stekel, W., 203
Struwelpeter, 321
Sublimation, 8, 300
Substitute names, 87
Suggestibility, 386
Suggestion, 386, 388
Suppression, 46, 248, 256, 259, 296, 298
Symbol, 123;
beheading, 231
Symbolism in the dream, 122;
in every day life, 130
Symbols, 125, 126;
of birth, 132;
sex, 126
Symptomatic acts, accidental and, 42
Symptom-development, 259;
interpretation, 259;
purpose of, 258, 259
Symptoms, individual, 232, 234;
meaning of, 221;
of neurosis, development of, 311;
neurotic, evolution of, 244;
objections to interpretations of, 260;
significance of phantasy for the development of, 324;
typical, 233
System of the unconscious, fore-conscious and the conscious, 255-257

Technique in dream interpretation, 82

Therapy, analytical, 372
Therapeutics of psychiatry, 220;
of psychoanalysis, 220
Third sex, 263
Tongue slip, mechanism of, 46, 49
Topophobia, 233
Transference, 25, 372, 379;
narcistic neuroses and, 386;
neuroses, 259, 339, 384
Translation of thoughts into visual images, 145
Traumatic fixation, 236;
neuroses, 237
Trenck, 108
True neuroses, 338;
and psychoneuroses, connection between symptoms of, 338;
symptoms of, 336
Typical symptoms, 234

Unconscious, the, 236, 255;
definition of, 90;
psychological processes, 240

Vold, J. Mourly, 66, 127
Vomiting, hysterical, 233
von Brücke, 295

Wallace, 247
Washing, a compulsive act, 233
Wishes, death, 169
Wish fulfillment, 180;
in dreams, 104, 107;
negative, 261;
positive, 261
Wundt school, 86

Zola, Emile, 224
Zurich school, 86

The following typographical errors have been corrected by the etext

transcriber:

Resistance and Supression=>Resistance and Suppression

Dark Ages faithfully perserved things=>Dark Ages faithfully preserved

 things

the dream anaylsis=>the dream analysis

reocgnize=>recognize

crimes commited=>crimes committed

embryo in the amnotic fluid=>embryo in the amniotic fluid

Sublim Porte=>Sublime Porte

remote of these thoughs=>remote of these thoughts

uncomfortabe=>uncomfortable

archiac or regressive mode=>archaic or regressive mode

 capitalist and the entrepeneur=>capitalist and the entrepreneur

By means of two selected illlustrations=>By means of two selected

illustrations

and did not yet want to a prophet=>and did not yet want to be a prophet

fundamenal difference=>fundamental difference

 psychlogical=>psychological

sexual substitute-satsifaction=>sexual substitute-satisfaction

carry on psychonalaysis=>carry on psychoanalysis

with manual anonism=>with manual ononism

the educator, Nesessity=>the educator, Necessity

 has been succssfully=>has been successfully

The physician forms a very favorable opinon=>The physician forms a very

favorable opinion

affctionate=>affectionate

destroyed the transfrence=>destroyed the transference

 read "Agamemnon" for "angenomen,"=>read "Agamemnon" for
"angenommen,"

"Angenomen" is a verb, meaning "to accept."=>"Angenommen" is a verb,

meaning "to accept."

misprints, which are of ocurse to be considered as errors of the

typesetter.=>misprints, which are of course to be considered as errors

 of the typesetter.

"Rückhaltos" means "unreservedly."=>"Rückhaltlos" means "unreservedly."

Struuelpeter=>Struwelpeter

Struwwelpeter=>Struwelpeter

Oberlander, 334=>Oberländer, 334

FOOTNOTES:
 [1] "Fehl-leistungen."

[2] In the German, the correct announcement is, "Connetable schickt sein Schwert
zurück." The novice, as a result of the suggestion, announced instead that "Komfortabel
schickt sein Pferd zurück."
[3] "Aufstossen" instead of "anstossen."
[4] "Begleit-digen" compounded of "begleiten" and "beleidigen."
[5] "Briefkasten" instead of "Brütkasten."
[6] "Geneigt" instead of "geeignet."
[7] "Versuchungen" instead of "Versuche."
[8] "Aufgepatzt" instead of "aufgeputzt."
[9] "Angenommen" is a verb, meaning "to accept."
[10] The young man here said "aufzustossen" instead of "anzustossen."
[11] Prof.Freud here gives the two examples, quite untranslatable, of "apopos" instead
of "apropos," and "eischeiszwaibehen" instead of "eiweiszscheibehen."
[12] From C. G. Jung.
[13] From A. A. Brill.
[14] From B. Dattner.
[15] So also in the writings of A. Maeder (French), A. A. Brill (English) J. Stärke
(Dutch) and others.
[16] From R. Reitler.
[17] In
the German Reichstag, November, 1908. "Rückhaltlos" means "unreservedly."
"Rückgratlos" means "without backbone."
[18] "Zum Vorschein bringen," means to bring to light. "Schweinereien" means
filthiness or obscurity. The telescoping of the two ideas, resulting in the word
"Vorschwein," plainly reveals the speaker's opinion of the affair.
[19] The lady meant to say "Nach Hause," "to reach home." The word "Hose" means
"drawers." The preservating content of her hesitancy is hereby revealed.
[20] The German reads, "bei meinen Versuchen an Mausen," which, through the slip of
the pen, resulted in "bei meinen Versuchen an Menschen."
[21] "Angenommen" is a verb, meaning "to accept."
[22] Josef Breuer, in the years 1880-1882. Cf. also my lectures on psychoanalysis,
delivered in the United States in 1909.
[23] The reader will recall the example: "things were re-filled."
[24] From the sublime to the ridiculous is but a narrow passage.
[25] Yes, the passage from Calais.
[26] "Vorzug." "Vom Bett hervorziehen."
 [27] "Schränkt sich ein."
[28] InGermany tickets may be bought before the day of the performance only upon
additional payment, over and above the regular cost of the ticket. This is called
"Vorverkaufsgebühr."
[29] See frontispiece
[30] "steigen."

[31] "den Frauen nachsteigen," and "ein alter Steiger."

[32] "besitzen," to straddle.
[33] While revising these pages I chanced upon a newspaper article that I quote here as
an unexpected supplement to the above lines.
THE PUNISHMENT OF GOD 
A BROKEN ARM FOR BROKEN FAITH
Mrs. Anna M. the wife of a soldier in the reserve accused Mrs. Clementine C. of being
untrue to her husband. The accusation reads that Mrs. C. had carried on an illicit
relationship with Karl M. while her own husband was on the battlefield, from which he
even sent her 70 Kronen a month. Mrs. C. had received quite a lot of money from the
husband of the plaintiff, while she and her children had to live in hunger and in misery.
Friends of her husband had told her that Mrs. C. had visited inns with M. and had
caroused there until late at night. The accused had even asked the husband of the plaintiff
before several infantrymen whether he would not soon get a divorce from his "old
woman" and live with her. Mrs. C.'s housekeeper had also repeatedly seen the husband of
the plaintiff in her (Mrs. C.'s) apartment, in complete negligée.
Yesterday Mrs. C. denied before a judge in Leopoldstadt that she even knew M; there
could be no question of intimate relation between them.
The witness, Albertine M., however, testified that Mrs. C. had kissed the husband of
the plaintiff and that she had surprised them at it.
When M. was called as a witness in an earlier proceeding he had denied any intimate
relation to the accused. Yesterday the judge received a letter in which the witness retracts
the statement he made in the first proceeding and admits that he had carried on a love
affair with Mrs. C., until last June. He says that he only denied this relationship in the
former proceeding for the sake of the accused because before the proceeding she had
come to him and begged on her knees that he should save her and not confess. "To-day,"
wrote the witness, "I felt impelled to make a full confession to the court, since I
have broken my left arm and this appears to me as the punishment of God for my
transgression."
The judge maintained the penal offense had already become null and void, whereupon
the plaintiff withdrew her accusation and the liberation of the accused followed.
[34] This highly technical concept is explained in The Interpretation of Dreams, Chap.
VII, Sec. (b) pp. 422 et seq.
[35] The principal street of Vienna.
[36] I do not mention another obvious interpretation of this "3" in the case of this
childless woman, because it is not material to this analysis.
 [37] Compare S. Freud, Totem and Taboo, 1913.
[38] E. Toulouse, Emile Zola—Enquête medico-psychologique, Paris, 1896.
[39] There are fagots and fagots.

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